海浪(外研社双语读库)(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Virginia Woolf 弗吉尼亚·伍尔夫

出版社：外语教学与研究出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

海浪(外研社双语读库)试读：

The Waves海浪

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually.

太阳尚未升起。大海与天空难以分辨，只是海面上微微泛着波澜，仿佛是一块布凸起了褶皱。渐渐地，随着天空发白，天边呈现出一道幽暗的线条，把海与天分开了，那块灰布的下面掀起厚重的波纹，一条接着一条，彼此跟随，互相追逐，不断前进。

As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold.

接近岸边时，每条波纹都高高跃起，凝聚了全部的力量，然后一一迸裂，在沙滩上铺开一层薄纱似的白色水花。潮水稍作停歇，又卷土重来，发出叹息的声响，好像一个熟睡的人不自觉的呼吸。渐渐地，天边那道幽暗的线条变得明晰了，好像一只旧酒瓶子里的渣滓终于沉淀下来，露出了玻璃的绿色。后面的天空也明朗起来，仿佛那里的白色渣滓已经沉淀下去，又仿佛有个在地平线下休憩的女子，她的手臂举起一盏灯，那融合了白、绿、黄的并不鲜明的光束，好像扇子的一根根扇骨，划过天空。接着，她把灯举得更高了一些，空气似乎变得如纤维一般，似乎要像焰火中轰然而起的青烟，脱离那闪耀着红黄丝缕的绿色水面。渐渐地，焰火的万千丝缕融汇成一团雾霭，一团白热，把羊毛一样灰沉沉的天空托在上面，化作亿万点淡蓝的微尘。海面慢慢变得透明起来，波纹荡漾，波光粼粼，直到那些幽暗的条纹几乎被擦拭得干干净净。慢慢地，那只举着灯的手臂抬得越来越高，越来越高，直到可以看见一片灿烂的光辉；地平线的边缘燃起一道弧光，周围的海面金光闪闪。

The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

阳光照在花园里的树上，把一片又一片叶子变得透明。一只鸟儿在高处啁啾；歇了一会儿；另一只鸟儿在低处开始了鸣啭。阳光清晰地照见屋子的墙壁，然后像扇坠一样映在一块白色窗帘上，给卧室窗前的那片树叶留下指纹大小的一枚蓝色阴影。窗帘微微掀动，但屋里的一切蒙蒙眬眬，无以分辨。窗外，鸟儿唱着它们单调的歌。

'I see a ring,' said Bernard, 'hanging above me. It quivers and hangs in a loop of light.'“我看见一个圆环，”伯纳德说，“悬在我的头上。它是悬着的光环，不停地颤动。”

'I see a slab of pale yellow,' said Susan, 'spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.'“我看见一块淡黄色的平面，”苏珊说，“向外扩展，直到它与一道紫色的条纹交汇。”

'I hear a sound,' said Rhoda, 'cheep, chirp; cheep chirp; going up and down.'“我听到一个声音，”罗达说，“唧唧，啾啾；唧唧，啾啾；一会儿高，一会儿低。”

'I see a globe,' said Neville, 'hanging down in a drop against the enormous flanks of some hill.'“我看见一个圆球，”内维尔说，“从巨大的山坡上陡直地悬垂下来。”

'I see a crimson tassel,' said Jinny, 'twisted with gold threads.'“我看见一条深红色的缨穗，”吉尼说，“缠绕着金色的丝线。”

'I hear something stamping,' said Louis. 'A great beast's foot is chained. It stamps, and stamps, and stamps.'“我听见什么东西在跺脚。”路易斯说。“一头巨兽的脚上拴着锁链。它不停地跺啊，跺啊，跺啊。”

'Look at the spider's web on the corner of the balcony,' said Bernard. 'It has beads of water on it, drops of white light.'“瞧那阳台角落里的蜘蛛网。”伯纳德说。“上面挂着水珠，一滴滴闪着白光。”

'The leaves are gathered round the window like pointed ears,' said Susan.“树叶堆满窗前，像带芒的麦穗。”苏珊说。

'A shadow falls on the path,' said Louis, 'like an elbow bent.'“一个影子投在小路上，”路易斯说，“像一只弯曲的臂肘。”

'Islands of light are swimming on the grass,' said Rhoda. 'They have fallen through the trees.'“光斑在草地上游弋。”罗达说。“它们是从树木之间漏下来的。”

'The birds' eyes are bright in the tunnels between the leaves,' said Neville.“在树叶之间的通道中，鸟儿的眼睛是明亮的。”内维尔说。

'The stalks are covered with harsh, short hairs,' said Jinny, 'and drops of water have stuck to them.'“叶梗表面布满粗短的绒毛，”吉尼说，“所以挂住了水滴。”

'A caterpillar is curled in a green ring,' said Susan, 'notched with blunt feet.'“毛毛虫蜷成一个绿圈圈，”苏珊说，“上面嵌着笨拙的脚。”

'The grey-shelled snail draws across the path and flattens the blades behind him,' said Rhoda.“灰壳的蜗牛穿过小路，身后留下压平了的草叶。”罗达说。

'And burning lights from the window-panes flash in and out on the grasses,' said Louis.“窗格子里透出燃着的灯火，在青草上面闪闪烁烁，忽明忽灭。”路易斯说。

'Stones are cold to my feet,' said Neville. 'I feel each one, round or pointed, separately.'“我的脚感觉到石头的凉意。”内维尔说。“每一块石头，或是圆的，或是尖的，都让我有不同的感觉。”

'The back of my hand burns,' said Jinny, 'but the palm is clammy and damp with dew.'“我的手背火烧火燎，”吉尼说，“但是手心却沾满露水，又冷又湿。”

'Now the cock crows like a spurt of hard, red water in the white tide,' said Bernard.“此时，雄鸡啼鸣，好像白色的浪潮中喷出一股红色的激流。”伯纳德说。

'Birds are singing up and down and in and out all round us,' said Susan.“鸟儿围着我们婉转啁啾，忽高忽低，时隐时现。”苏珊说。

'The beast stamps; the elephant with its foot chained; the great brute on the beach stamps,' said Louis.“野兽在跺脚；大象的脚上拴了锁链；海滩上那个巨大的牲畜在跺脚。”路易斯说。

'Look at the house,' said Jinny, 'with all its windows white with blinds.'“瞧那幢房子，”吉尼说，“所有的窗子都挂着白色的窗帘。”

'Cold water begins to run from the scullery tap,' said Rhoda, 'over the mackerel in the bowl.'“凉凉的水从洗碗室的水龙头里流出，”罗达说，“漫过碗中的鲭鱼。”

'The walls are cracked with gold cracks,' said Bernard, 'and there are blue, finger-shaped shadows of leaves beneath the windows.'“墙上裂开金色的缝隙，”伯纳德说，“树叶在窗前投下形如纤指的蓝色阴影。”

'Now Mrs Constable pulls up her thick black stockings,' said Susan.“瞧，康斯特布尔太太穿上她厚厚的黑色长袜。”苏珊说。

'When the smoke rises, sleep curls off the roof like a mist,' said Louis.“炊烟升起，睡意也像一阵薄雾从屋顶袅袅散去。”路易斯说。

'The birds sang in chorus first,' said Rhoda. 'Now the scullery door is unbarred. Off they fly. Off they fly like a fling of seed. But one sings by the bedroom window alone.'“鸟儿原先在合唱。”罗达说。“这时，洗碗室的门打开了。它们飞走了。它们飞走了，像一把撒出去的种子。但是有一只鸟仍在卧室窗前独自歌唱。”

'Bubbles form on the floor of the saucepan,' said Jinny. 'Then they rise, quicker and quicker, in a silver chain to the top.'“气泡在锅底翻腾，”吉尼说。“接着它们就冒上来，越冒越快，像一条银色的珠链，直冒向锅顶。”

'Now Billy scrapes the fish-scales with a jagged knife on to a wooden board,' said Neville.“瞧，比利用一把带锯齿的刀将鱼鳞刮到一块木质案板上。”内维尔说。

'The dining-room window is dark blue now,' said Bernard, 'and the air ripples above the chimneys.'“此时，餐室的窗子变成深蓝色，”伯纳德说，“微风在烟囱上方荡漾。”

'A swallow is perched on the lightning-conductor,' said Susan. 'And Biddy has smacked down the bucket on the kitchen flags.'“一只燕子停在避雷针上。”苏珊说。“比迪啪的一声把水桶撂在厨房的石板地上。”

'That is the first stroke of the church bell,' said Louis. 'Then the others follow; one, two; one, two; one, two.'“教堂的钟敲了第一响，”路易斯说。“接着就响个不停；一声，两声；一声，两声；一声，两声。”

'Look at the table-cloth, flying white along the table,' said Rhoda. 'Now there are rounds of white china, and silver streaks beside each plate.'“瞧那块桌布，洁白地掠过桌面。”罗达说。“这时摆上了一圈一圈洁白的瓷器，每个餐盘边都银光闪闪。”

'Suddenly a bee booms in my ear,' said Neville. 'It is here; it is past.'“突然，一只蜜蜂在我耳边嗡嗡叫。”内维尔说。“它在这儿；它飞走了。”

'I burn, I shiver,' said Jinny, 'out of this sun, into this shadow.'“我火烧火燎，我瑟瑟发抖，”吉尼说，“因为从阳光下来到阴影里。”

'Now they have all gone,' said Louis. 'I am alone. They have gone into the house for breakfast, and I am left standing by the wall among the flowers. It is very early, before lessons. Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows beneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark, green waters. I hold a stalk in my hand. I am the stalk. My roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lead and silver. I am all fibre. All tremors shake me, and the weight of the earth is pressed to my ribs. Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing. I am a boy in grey flannels with a belt fastened by a brass snake up here. Down there my eyes are the lidless eyes of a stone figure in a desert by the Nile. I see women passing with red pitchers to the river; I see camels swaying and men in turbans. I hear tramplings, tremblings, stirrings round me.“这会儿他们都走了。”路易斯说。“我孤单一人。他们进屋吃早餐去了，剩我一人在花丛中倚墙而立。天色很早，未到上课时间。绿意悠悠，繁花点缀。花瓣色彩斑斓。花茎从下面的黑色孔隙中伸了出来。花朵好像是光化作的鱼儿，在幽深、碧绿的水面上畅游。我把一支花茎握在手中。我就是这支花茎。我的根向世界的纵深扎下去，穿透干燥的砖石和潮湿的泥土，穿透铅与银的矿脉。我全身都是力量。任何轻微的震动都会令我发抖，我的身躯承载着大地之重。瞧这儿，我的眼睛好似绿叶，一无所见。我是一个小男孩，穿着一身灰色法兰绒，系着一条黄铜蛇扣的腰带。瞧那儿，我的眼睛好似尼罗河畔沙漠中一尊石像的眼睛，永远睁着。我看见女人们头顶红色水罐前往河边；我看见那些摇摇晃晃的骆驼和缠着头巾的男人。我听见踩踏声、战栗声和骚乱声在我四周响起。

'Up here Bernard, Neville, Jinny and Susan (but not Rhoda) skim the flower-beds with their nets. They skim the butterflies from the nodding tops of the flowers. They brush the surface of the world. Their nets are full of fluttering wings. "Louis! Louis! Louis!"they shout. But they cannot see me. I am on the other side of the hedge. There are only little eye-holes among the leaves. Oh Lord, let them pass. Lord, let them lay their butterflies on a pocket—handkerchief on the gravel. Let them count out their tortoise—shells, their red admirals and cabbage whites. But let me be unseen. I am green as a yew tree in the shade of the hedge. My hair is made of leaves. I am rooted to the middle of the earth. My body is a stalk. I press the stalk. A drop oozes from the hole at the mouth and slowly, thickly, grows larger and larger. Now something pink passes the eyehole. Now an eye-beam is slid through the chink. Its beam strikes me. I am a boy in a grey flannel suit. She has found me. I am struck on the nape of the neck. She has kissed me. All is shattered.'“在这儿，伯纳德、内维尔、吉尼和苏珊（但不包括罗达）用他们的捕网在花坛上面掠来掠去。他们在低垂的花冠上面掠捕蝴蝶。他们轻轻掠过世界的表层。他们的捕网里满是扑动的翅翼。‘路易斯！路易斯！路易斯！’他们大喊大叫。但是他们看不见我。我在树篱的另一边。树叶之间只有一些小小的洞眼。噢，上帝啊，让他们走开吧。上帝啊，让他们把他们的蝴蝶放在一小块地方——沙石堆上的一方手帕上面吧。让他们数清楚他们的乌龟壳、红花蝶和菜粉蝶吧。但别让他们看见我。我在树篱的影子里，像一株绿色的紫杉树。我的头发是片片树叶。我扎根在大地的中心。我的身体是一支花茎。我捏了捏这支花茎。一滴汁液从断口的孔隙渗出，缓缓地，黏黏地，越积越多。这时，一个粉红色的身影闪过洞眼。这时，一道目光悄悄穿透缝隙，溜了过来。这道目光落在我身上。我是一个小男孩，穿着一身灰色法兰绒套装。她发现了我。我的后脖颈被碰了一下。她吻了我。一切都乱了。”

'I was running,' said Jinny, 'after breakfast. I saw leaves moving in a hole in the hedge. I thought "That is a bird on its nest."I parted them and looked; but there was no bird on a nest. The leaves went on moving. I was frightened. I ran past Susan, past Rhoda, and Neville and Bernard in the tool-house talking. I cried as I ran, faster and faster. What moved the leaves? What moves my heart, my legs? And I dashed in here, seeing you green as a bush, like a branch, very still, Louis, with your eyes fixed. "Is he dead?"I thought, and kissed you, with my heart jumping under my pink frock like the leaves, which go on moving, though there is nothing to move them. Now I smell geraniums; I smell earth mould. I dance. I ripple. I am thrown over you like a net of light. I lie quivering flung over you.'“我吃过早饭，”吉尼说，“正在跑步。我看见树篱的洞眼里有叶子在动。我想：‘那是一只呆在窝里的鸟吧。’我拨开它们，瞧了瞧；没有鸟，也没有窝。树叶不停地晃动。我害怕了。我从苏珊身边跑过，从罗达身边跑过，又从正在工具房里说话的内维尔和伯纳德身边跑过。我一边跑一边哭，越跑越快。是什么让树叶晃动？是什么让我心跳加快，撒腿奔跑？我冲到这里，看见你一身碧绿，像一丛灌木，像一根树枝，一动不动，路易斯，你的眼睛一眨也不眨。‘他死了吗？’心里想着，我就吻了你，我的粉红衣裙下面，我的心在砰砰跳，就像那些树叶，不停地晃动，却毫无来由。这时，我闻到天竺葵的芬芳；我闻到泥土堆的气息。我手舞足蹈。我轻扭身躯。我像一张光的网，撒向你。我躺下来，颤抖着，投入你的怀抱。”

'Through the chink in the hedge,' said Susan, 'I saw her kiss him. I raised my head from my flower-pot and looked through a chink in the hedge. I saw her kiss him. I saw them, Jinny and Louis, kissing. Now I will wrap my agony inside my pocket-handkerchief. It shall be screwed tight into a ball. I will go to the beech wood alone, before lessons. I will not sit at a table, doing sums. I will not sit next Jinny and next Louis. I will take my anguish and lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine it and take it between my fingers. They will not find me. I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and my hair will be matted and I shall sleep under hedges and drink water from ditches and die there.'“透过树篱的缝隙，”苏珊说，“我看见她吻了他。我从花盆上抬起头来，透过树篱的一道缝隙望过去。我看见她吻了他。我看见他们俩，吉尼和路易斯，正在亲吻。现在，我要把我的苦恼裹进我的手帕。把它拧成紧紧的一团。上课之前，我要一个人到柏树林中去。我不要坐在桌边做算术。我不要挨着吉尼和路易斯坐。我要带走我的痛苦，把它放在柏树下面的树根上。我要小心察看它，并用手指夹住它。他们不会找到我。我要吃各种坚果，要在刺藤丛中寻觅鸟蛋，我的头发会乱成一团，我要睡在树篱下面，喝沟渠里的水，然后死在那里。”

'Susan has passed us,' said Bernard. 'She has passed the tool-house door with her handkerchief screwed into a ball. She was not crying, but her eyes, which are so beautiful, were narrow as cats' eyes before they spring. I shall follow her, Neville. I shall go gently behind her, to be at hand, with my curiosity, to comfort her when she bursts out in a rage and thinks, "I am alone."“苏珊刚从我们身边经过。”伯纳德说。“她从工具房门口经过，她的手帕拧成了一个团。她没哭，但是一双美丽的眼睛眯着，就像猫儿受到惊吓即将起跳时的样子。我要跟着她，内维尔。我要带上好奇心，悄悄跟在她后面，随时给她帮助，在她大发脾气，心想‘我多么孤单’的时候，我要给她安慰。”

'Now she walks across the field with a swing, nonchalantly, to deceive us. Then she comes to the dip; she thinks she is unseen; she begins to run with her fists clenched in front of her. Her nails meet in the ball of her pocket-handkerchief. She is making for the beech woods out of the light. She spreads her arms as she comes to them and takes to the shade like a swimmer. But she is blind after the light and trips and flings herself down on the roots under the trees, where the light seems to pant in and out, in and out. The branches heave up and down. There is agitation and trouble here. There is gloom. The light is fitful. There is anguish here. The roots make a skeleton on the ground, with dead leaves heaped in the angles. Susan has spread her anguish out. Her pocket-handkerchief is laid on the roots of the beech trees and she sobs, sitting crumpled where she has fallen.'“瞧，她晃晃悠悠，漫不经心地穿过田地，想瞒过我们。随后她来到那片凹地；她以为谁也没看见她；她突然把双拳攥在胸前，飞跑起来。她的指甲扣进团起来的手帕中。她正朝着阳光照不到的那片柏树林奔去。她展开双臂奔过去，像一个游泳的人，投进树荫。但是突然离开阳光，她的眼睛也盲了，她绊了一下，扑倒在树根上，光线从树丛中隐隐透射进来，好像人在喘气，一呼一吸，一呼一吸。树枝上下晃动。这儿有烦乱与苦恼。有忧悒。光线时断时续。这儿有痛苦。地上的树根好像一具骷髅，关节处积满枯叶。苏珊摊开了她的痛苦。她把手帕放在柏树的根上，然后瘫软地坐在她跌倒的地方，抽噎了起来。”

'I saw her kiss him,' said Susan. 'I looked between the leaves and saw her. She danced in flecked with diamonds light as dust. And I am squat, Bernard, I am short. I have eyes that look close to the ground and see insects in the grass. The yellow warmth in my side turned to stone when I saw Jinny kiss Louis. I shall eat grass and die in a ditch in the brown water where dead leaves have rotted.'“我看见她吻了他。”苏珊说。“我从树叶之间望过去，就看见了她。她像微尘，在钻石点缀的光芒中翩翩起舞。可我又矮又胖，伯纳德，我多么矮小。我的眼睛总是紧紧地盯着地面，看着草丛中的昆虫。当我看见吉尼吻了路易斯，我身边温暖的阳光一下子变成了石头。我要啃着青草，死在一条沟渠里，死在枯叶腐烂的污水中。”

'I saw you go,' said Bernard. 'As you passed the door of the tool-house I heard you cry "I am unhappy."I put down my knife. I was making boats out of firewood with Neville. And my hair is untidy, because when Mrs Constable told me to brush it there was a fly in a web, and I asked, "Shall I free the fly? Shall I let the fly be eaten?"So I am late always. My hair is unbrushed and these chips of wood stick in it. When I heard you cry I followed you, and saw you put down your handkerchief, screwed up, with its rage, with its hate, knotted in it. But soon that will cease. Our bodies are close now. You hear me breathe. You see the beetle too carrying off a leaf on its back. It runs this way, then that way, so that even your desire while you watch the beetle, to possess one single thing (it is Louis now) must waver, like the light in and out of the beech leaves; and then words, moving darkly, in the depths of your mind will break up this knot of hardness, screwed in your pocket-handkerchief.'“我看见你跑开了。”伯纳德说。“当你经过工具房门口时，我听见你哭着说：‘我真不幸。’我放下刀子。当时我正在和内维尔用烧火的木柴造船。我头发蓬乱，因为康斯特布尔太太叫我梳头的时候，正巧有一只苍蝇落在蛛网中，我就寻思着：‘我是该把苍蝇放了？还是该让蜘蛛吃掉它？’我总是这样把事情耽搁了。我的头发没梳，所以粘着这些木屑。当我听见你的哭声，我就跟了过来，看见你把拧成一团、里面包着怒气和恼恨的手帕放了下来。但这一切很快就会了结。现在我俩的身体依偎在一起。你听见了我的呼吸。你还看见了甲壳虫，正在搬动背上的一片树叶。它一会儿爬向这边，一会儿又爬向那边，所以你看，即使你观察甲壳虫的过程，也一定会让你占有一样东西（眼下就是路易斯）的欲望发生动摇，就像柏树叶中的光线那样时有时无；随后，一些话语，你心灵深处隐约涌动的话语，将会冲破拧在手帕中的这个硬结。”

'I love,' said Susan, 'and I hate. I desire one thing only. My eyes are hard. Jinny's eyes break into a thousand lights. Rhoda's are like those pale flowers to which moths come in the evening. Yours grow full and brim and never break. But I am already set on my pursuit. I see insects in the grass. Though my mother still knits white socks for me and hems pinafores and I am a child, I love and I hate.'“我爱，”苏珊说，“我也恨。我只想追求一样东西。我的眼睛是冷酷锐利的。吉尼的眼睛会突然点亮千盏灯火。罗达的眼睛好像那些苍白的花朵，总会引来黄昏的飞蛾。你的眼睛圆满充盈，从不失去神采。但是对于我的追求，我已经打定主意。我看见草丛中的昆虫。而我的母亲还在为我织着白色短袜，为我缝制带褶边的围裙，我是个孩子，我会爱会恨。”

'But when we sit together, close,' said Bernard, 'we melt into each other with phrases. We are edged with mist. We make an unsubstantial territory.'“但是当我们依偎着坐在一起的时候，”伯纳德说，“话语让我们彼此交融。薄雾弥漫在我们身边。为我们营造出一片空幻的领地。”

'I see the beetle,' said Susan. 'It is black, I see; it is green, I see; I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.'“我看见甲壳虫。”苏珊说。“它是黑色的，我看见了；它是绿色的，我看见了；我被这些单个的词语束缚住了。而你无拘无束；你神游物外；你用连珠妙语让自己神采飞扬。”

'Now,' said Bernard, 'let us explore. There is the white house lying among the trees. It lies down there ever so far beneath us. We shall sink like swimmers just touching the ground with the tips of their toes. We shall sink through the green air of the leaves, Susan. We sink as we run. The waves close over us, the beech leaves meet above our heads. There is the stable clock with its gilt hands shining. Those are the flats and heights of the roofs of the great house. There is the stable-boy clattering in the yard in rubber boots. That is Elvedon.“来吧，”伯纳德说，“让我们一起探索。有幢白色的房子坐落在树林中。它位于离我们很远的地方。我们要沉下去，像游泳的人用脚趾尖碰触水底。苏珊，我们要沉到树叶的绿色气息下。我们一边跑，一边下沉。海浪包围了我们，柏树叶在我们头顶汇拢。瞧那口坚固的大钟，镀金的指针闪闪发光。瞧那幢大房子，那些平平凹凹、高高低低的屋顶。瞧那个小马倌，穿着胶鞋在院子里踩出咔哒咔哒的声响。那里是埃尔夫顿。

'Now we have fallen through the tree-tops to the earth. The air no longer rolls its long, unhappy, purple waves over us. We touch earth; we tread ground. That is the close-clipped hedge of the ladies' garden. There they walk at noon, with scissors, clipping roses. Now we are in the ringed wood with the wall round it. This is Elvedon. I have seen signposts at the cross-roads with one arm pointing "To Elvedon". No one has been there. The ferns smell very strong, and there are red funguses growing beneath them. Now we wake the sleeping daws who have never seen a human form; now we tread on rotten oak apples, red with age and slippery. There is a ring of wall round this wood; nobody comes here. Listen! That is the flop of a giant toad in the undergrowth; that is the patter of some primeval fir-cone falling to rot among the ferns.“现在我们从树梢落到了地上。我们头上的天空不再翻涌，不再有绵延的、悲伤的紫色海浪。我们接触到泥土；我们踩着大地。那是女士花园旁一道修剪细致的树篱。中午的时候，她们在那儿一边散步，一边拿着剪刀修剪玫瑰。现在我们来到围墙环绕的小树林里。这里是埃尔夫顿。我在十字路口见过一处标志牌，上面有只手臂指示‘去往埃尔夫顿’。没有人去过那儿。羊齿草发出浓烈的气味，下面生长着红色的霉菌。瞧，我们惊醒了睡梦中的寒鸦，它们还从未见过人的样子呢；瞧，我们踩在腐烂的栎树瘿上面，它们被岁月染成了红色，滑溜溜的。有一道围墙环绕着这片小树林；没有人会来这里。听！一只巨大的癞蛤蟆噗嗵蹦进灌木丛里；一枚远古的冷杉球果啪嗒落了下来，将在羊齿草丛中慢慢腐烂。

'Put your foot on this brick. Look over the wall. That is Elvedon. The lady sits between the two long windows, writing. The gardeners sweep the lawn with giant brooms. We are the first to come here. We are the discoverers of an unknown land. Do not stir; if the gardeners saw us they would shoot us. We should be nailed like stoats to the stable door. Look! Do not move. Grasp the ferns tight on the top of the wall.'“你把脚踏上这块砖。看看墙的那边。那里就是埃尔夫顿。有位女士坐在两排长长的窗子间，正在写字。几个园丁用巨大的扫帚清理着草坪。我们是最先来到这里的人。我们发现了一片无人知晓的土地。别声张；要是园丁看见我俩，他们会朝我们射击。我们会像那些白鼬一样被钉在两截门上。当心！别动。抓牢墙头的羊齿草。”

'I see the lady writing. I see the gardeners sweeping,' said Susan. 'If we died here, nobody would bury us.'“我看见那位女士在写字。我看见几个园丁在打扫。”苏珊说。“要是死在这里，没有人会来埋葬我们。”

'Run!' said Bernard.“快跑！”伯纳德说。

'Run! The gardener with the black beard has seen us! We shall be shot! We shall be shot like jays and pinned to the wall! We are in a hostile country. We must escape to the beech wood. We must hide under the trees. I turned a twig as we came. There is a secret path. Bend as low as you can. Follow without looking back. They will think we are foxes. Run!“快跑！那个黑胡子园丁看见我们了！我们会被射死的！我们会像松鸦一样被射死，然后钉在墙上！我们身处敌国。我们必须逃到柏树林中去。我们必须藏到树下。来的时候我折弯过一根小树枝。有一条秘密的小路。尽量压低身子。跟紧，别回头。他们会以为我们是狐狸。快跑！

'Now we are safe. Now we can stand upright again. Now we can stretch our arms in this high canopy, in this vast wood. I hear nothing. That is only the murmur of the waves in the air. That is a wood-pigeon breaking cover in the tops of the beech trees. The pigeon beats the air; the pigeon beats the air with wooden wings.'“现在我们安全了。现在我们可以重新站直了。现在我们可以舒展手臂了，在这高高的华盖之下，在这辽阔的树林之中。我什么也听不见。空气中只有呢喃似的波动。一只旅鸽在柏树的梢头探出身形。鸽子拍打着空气；鸽子用笨拙的翅膀拍打着空气。”

'Now you trail away,' said Susan, 'making phrases. Now you mount like an air-ball's string, higher and higher through the layers of the leaves, out of reach. Now you lag. Now you tug at my skirts, looking back, making phrases. You have escaped me. Here is the garden. Here is the hedge. Here is Rhoda on the path rocking petals to and fro in her brown basin.'“这会儿你渐聊渐远了，”苏珊说，“编着大话。这会儿你像一根牵着气球的线绳，越飞越高，穿过层层树叶，让人捉摸不到。这会儿你拖后了。这会儿你扯着我的裙子，一边回头望去，一边说着缥缈的话语。你逃离了我。花园到了。树篱到了。罗达正在小路上，不停地摇晃着在褐色盆子里的花瓣。

'All my ships are white,' said Rhoda. 'I do not want red petals of hollyhocks or geranium. I want white petals that float when I tip the basin up. I have a fleet now swimming from shore to shore. I will drop a twig in as a raft for a drowning sailor. I will drop a stone in and see bubbles rise from the depths of the sea. Neville has gone and Susan has gone; Jinny is in the kitchen garden picking currants with Louis perhaps. I have a short time alone, while Miss Hudson spreads our copy-books on the schoolroom table. I have a short space of freedom. I have picked all the fallen petals and made them swim. I have put raindrops in some. I will plant a lighthouse here, a head of Sweet Alice. And I will now rock the brown basin from side to side so that my ships may ride the waves. Some will founder. Some will dash themselves against the cliffs. One sails alone. That is my ship. It sails into icy caverns where the sea-bear barks and stalactites swing green chains. The waves rise; their crests curl; look at the lights on the mastheads. They have scattered, they have foundered, all except my ship, which mounts the wave and sweeps before the gale and reaches the islands where the parrots chatter and the creepers...'“我所有的船都是白色的。”罗达说。“我不想要蜀葵或天竺葵的红色花瓣。当我将盆倾覆时，我想要这些漂浮着的白色花瓣。现在我有一只舰队，从此岸驶向彼岸。我要抛下一根小树枝，给溺水船员当木筏。我要投进一块石子，看着那些泡泡从大海深处冒上来。内维尔走开了，苏珊也走开了；吉尼在家庭菜园里，可能正和路易斯一起采醋栗吧。我可以独自呆一小会儿，因为这时赫德森小姐正把我们的习字簿摊放在教室讲桌上。我拥有短暂的自由。我把所有凋落的花瓣都捡了起来，让它们在水上漂游。我给一些花瓣洒上了雨滴。我要在这儿竖起一座灯塔，一座斯威特·艾丽斯的头像。现在我要左右摇晃这褐色的水盆，好让我的船乘风破浪。有些船会沉没。有些船会冲向崖岸。有一艘船孤独地航行。那是我的船它驶入冰冷的洞窟，那里海熊在咆哮，钟乳石摆动着绿色的锁链。波浪腾空而起；浪头翻卷；睥睨着桅顶的灯。它们散架了，它们沉没了，只有我的船骑上浪头，驾着飓风，抵达小岛，岛上鹦鹉叽叽喳喳，还有啄木鸟......"

'Where is Bernard?' said Neville. 'He has my knife. We were in the tool-shed making boats, and Susan came past the door. And Bernard dropped his boat and went after her taking my knife, the sharp one that cuts the keel. He is like a dangling wire, a broken bell-pull, always twangling. He is like the seaweed hung outside the window, damp now, now dry. He leaves me in the lurch; he follows Susan; and if Susan cries he will take my knife and tell her stories. The big blade is an emperor; the broken blade a Negro. I hate dangling things; I hate dampish things. I hate wandering and mixing things together. Now the bell rings and we shall be late. Now we must drop our toys. Now we must go in together. The copy-books are laid out side by side on the green baize table.'

与下一行合并。“伯纳德去哪儿了？”内维尔说。“他拿了我的刀子。刚才我俩在工具房里造船，苏珊从门口经过。伯纳德丢下他的船，追随她去了，拿着我的刀子，那把切龙骨很锋利的刀子。他像一根摇摆的导线，一条破损的钟绳，总是带着鼻音。他像挂在窗外的海草，一会儿湿，一会儿干。他丢下我不管了；他追苏珊去了；苏珊一哭，他就会拿走我的刀子，然后给她讲故事。大刀片是位皇帝；破刀片是个黑人。我讨厌摇摆不定的东西；我讨厌湿漉漉的东西。我讨厌四处游荡，把事情搅在一起。现在铃声响了，我们要迟到了。现在我们必须丢下玩具。现在我们必须一起进去。那些习字簿紧挨着摆放在绿呢桌面上。”

'I will not conjugate the verb,' said Louis, 'until Bernard has said it. My father is a banker in Brisbane and I speak with an Australian accent. I will wait and copy Bernard. He is English. They are all English. Susan's father is a clergyman. Rhoda has no father. Bernard and Neville are the sons of gentlemen. Jinny lives with her grandmother in London. Now they suck their pens. Now they twist their copy-books, and, looking sideways at Miss Hudson, count the purple buttons on her bodice. Bernard has a chip in his hair. Susan has a red look in her eyes. Both are flushed. But I am pale; I am neat, and my knickerbockers are drawn together by a belt with a brass snake. I know the lesson by heart. I know more than they will ever know. I knew my cases and my genders; I could know everything in the world if I wished. But I do not wish to come to the top and say my lesson. My roots are threaded, like fibres in a flower-pot, round and round about the world. I do not wish to come to the top and live in the light of this great clock, yellow-faced, which ticks and ticks. Jinny and Susan, Bernard and Neville bind themselves into a thong with which to lash me. They laugh at my neatness, at my Australian accent. I will now try to imitate Bernard softly lisping Latin.'“直到伯纳德已经说出那个动词，”路易斯说，“我才会给它变形。我父亲是布里斯班的银行家，所以我说话带有澳大利亚口音。我要等着抄伯纳德的。他是英国人。他们都是英国人。苏珊的父亲是个牧师。罗达没有父亲。伯纳德和内维尔都是绅士的儿子。吉尼与她的祖母住在伦敦。现在他们吮着他们的钢笔。现在他们揉着作业本，一边斜睥着赫德森小姐，一边数她衣裙上的紫色纽扣。伯纳德头发上有片木屑。苏珊眼中红红的。两人的脸都红扑扑的。而我脸色苍白；我干净利落，我的灯笼裤上束着一条铜蛇扣腰带。我用心记住了课文。我懂的比他们多。我早就搞懂了那些例句和性数变化；如果我愿意，我会把世界上的一切都搞懂。但我不希望回答功课，显得一枝独秀。我的根丝丝缕缕，像花坛中的纤维，在大千世界绕啊，绕啊。我不愿意出人头地，为这口嘀哒嘀哒的黄脸大钟而活。吉尼、苏珊、伯纳德和内维尔结成一条皮鞭，来抽打我。他们嘲笑我的干净利落，嘲笑我的澳大利亚口音。现在我要竭力模仿伯纳德，说点轻声曼语、口齿不清的拉丁文。”

'Those are white words,' said Susan, 'like stones one picks up by the seashore.'“那些洁白的词语，”苏珊说，“像在海边被人拾起的石子。”

'They flick their tails right and left as I speak them,' said Bernard. 'They wag their tails; they flick their tails; they move through the air in flocks, now this way, now that way, moving all together, now dividing, now coming together.'“我说出它们的时候，它们的尾巴左右拍打。”伯纳德说。“它们摇晃着尾巴；它们拍打着尾巴；它们成群地穿过空气，一会儿这边，一会儿那边，全都在动个不停，时而分散，时而又聚合在一起。”

'Those are yellow words, those are fiery words,' said Jinny. 'I should like a fiery dress, a yellow dress, a fulvous dress to wear in the evening.'“那是黄色的词语，那是火红的词语。”吉尼说。“我想要一件火红的裙子，一件黄色的裙子，一件茶色的裙子，在傍晚时穿在身上。”

'Each tense,' said Neville, 'means differently. There is an order in this world; there are distinctions, there are differences in this world, upon whose verge I step. For this is only a beginning.'“每一种时态，”内维尔说，“都有不同的含义。这个世界存在一种秩序；存在种种特性，存在世上的种种差异，而我行走在它的边缘。因为这只是个开始。”

'Now Miss Hudson,' said Rhoda, 'has shut the book. Now the terror is beginning. Now taking her lump of chalk she draws figures, six, seven, eight, and then a cross and then a line on the blackboard. What is the answer? The others look; they look with understanding. Louis writes; Susan writes; Neville writes; Jinny writes; even Bernard has now begun to write. But I cannot write. I see only figures. The others are handing in their answers, one by one. Now it is my turn. But I have no answer. The others are allowed to go. They slam the door. Miss Hudson goes. I am left alone to find an answer. The figures mean nothing now. Meaning has gone. The clock ticks. The two hands are convoys marching through a desert. The black bars on the clock face are green oases. The long hand has marched ahead to find water. The other, painfully stumbles among hot stones in the desert. It will die in the desert. The kitchen door slams. Wild dogs bark far away. Look, the loop of the figure is beginning to fill with time; it holds the world in it. I begin to draw a figure and the world is looped in it, and I myself am outside the loop; which I now join—so—and seal up, and make entire. The world is entire, and I am outside of it, crying, "Oh save me, from being blown for ever outside the loop of time!"'“瞧，”罗达说，“赫德森小姐合上了书。现在恐怖的事要发生了。只见她拿起一截粉笔，在黑板上写了几个数字，6、7、8，然后画了个叉，然后又画了一条线。答案是什么？其他人在看；他们理解地看着。路易斯在写；苏珊在写；内维尔在写；吉尼在写；甚至伯纳德现在也开始写了。但我没法写。我只看见几个数字。其他人一个接一个，都在交答案。现在轮到我了。但是我没写出答案。其他人可以走了。他们摔门而出。赫德森小姐走了。留下我一个，还在寻找答案。此时那些数字毫无意义。它们失去了意义。钟声嘀哒。两个指针是沙漠中行进的车队。钟面上的黑杠杠是绿色的沙洲。长针已经赶在前面，找到了水源。另一指针还在沙漠中炙热的石头之间，跌跌撞撞，痛苦着。它将死在沙漠中。厨房门砰的一声响。野狗在远处狂吠。瞧，那个数字的圈圈即将被时间填满；它里面容纳了世界。我开始画一个数字，把世界圈在里面，而我自己在圈圈的外面；现在我要进来——这样——完全密封，形成一个整体。世界是一个整体，而我却在它的外面，哭喊着：‘噢，救救我，别把我永远地抛弃在时间的圈圈之外！’”

'There Rhoda sits staring at the blackboard,' said Louis, 'in the schoolroom, while we ramble off, picking here a bit of thyme, pinching here a leaf of southernwood while Bernard tells a story. Her shoulder-blades meet across her back like the wings of a small butterfly. And as she stares at the chalk figures, her mind lodges in those white circles, it steps through those white loops into emptiness, alone. They have no meaning for her. She has no answer for them. She has no body as the others have. And I, who speak with an Australian accent, whose father is a banker in Brisbane, do not fear her as I fear the others.'“教室里罗达坐在那儿盯着黑板，”路易斯说，“伯纳德在讲一个故事，我们在闲逛，这儿摘一点百里香，那儿掐一片青蒿。她的一对肩胛，好像一只小蝴蝶的翅膀，越过她的后背相接。她的眼睛盯着那几个粉笔数字，她的心借宿在那些白色的圈圈里，踏过那些白色的圈圈，一颗孤单的心踏入空虚之中。它们对她毫无意义。她找不到它们的答案。她和其他人拥有不一样的肉体。而我，我说话带有澳大利亚口音，我的父亲是布里斯班的银行家，不像害怕其他人那样害怕她。”

'Let us now crawl,' said Bernard, 'under the canopy of the currant leaves, and tell stories. Let us inhabit the underworld. Let us take possession of our secret territory, which is lit by pendant currants like candelabra, shining red on one side, black on the other. Here, Jinny, if we curl up close, we can sit under the canopy of the currant leaves and watch the censers swing. This is our universe. The others pass down the carriage-drive. The skirts of Miss Hudson and Miss Curry sweep by like candle extinguishers. Those are Susan's white socks. Those are Louis' neat sand-shoes firmly printing the gravel. Here come warm gusts of decomposing leaves, of rotting vegetation. We are in a swamp now; in a malarial jungle. There is an elephant white with maggots, killed by an arrow shot dead in its eye. The bright eyes of hopping birds—eagles, vultures—are apparent. They take us for fallen trees. They pick at a worm—that is a hooded cobra—and leave it with a festering brown scar to be mauled by lions. This is our world, lit with crescents and stars of light; and great petals half transparent block the openings like purple windows. Everything is strange. Things are huge and very small. The stalks of flowers are thick as oak trees. Leaves are high as the domes of vast cathedrals. We are giants, lying here, who can make forests quiver.'“现在，让我们在醋栗树叶子的华盖下，”伯纳德说，“边爬边讲故事吧。让我们栖息在地下。让我们占有这片秘密的领地。那些坠子似的醋栗好像烛台上闪烁的灯火，一面红艳艳，另一面黑漆漆，点亮着它。到这儿来，吉尼，我俩紧紧蜷起身子，就能坐在这片醋栗树叶的华盖下，一起看香炉袅袅。这是我们的天地。其他人沿着车道走远了。赫德森小姐和柯里小姐的裙子像熄烛器，一扫而过。那是苏珊的白色短袜。那是路易斯干干净净的沙地鞋，稳稳当当地踩在沙石上。阵阵暖风袭来，是枯叶，是腐草。现在我们踏进一片沼泽；一片充满瘴疠的丛林。有一头大象，身上爬满白色的蛆虫，一支箭射进它的眼睛，杀死了它。一些忙碌的鸟儿——老鹰、秃鹫——它们闪亮的眼睛清晰可见。它们把咱们当成了倒下的树。它们去啄一条虫——那是一只带着颈部皮褶的眼镜蛇——结果给它留下一处溃烂的褐色伤疤，然后由狮子来把它收拾了。这是我们的世界，新月和繁星把它照亮；半透明的巨大花瓣像紫色的窗封住各个出口。一切都很怪异。事物要么硕大无比，要么极其微小。花梗如橡树一般粗壮。树叶长得特别高，仿佛大教堂的圆顶。躺在这儿，我们是能让整个森林颤抖起来的巨人。”

'This is here,' said Jinny, 'this is now. But soon we shall go. Soon Miss Curry will blow her whistle. We shall walk. We shall part. You will go to school. You will have masters wearing crosses with white ties. I shall have a mistress in a school on the East Coast who sits under a portrait of Queen Alexandra. That is where I am going, and Susan and Rhoda. This is only here; this is only now. Now we lie under the currant bushes and every time the breeze stirs we are mottled all over. My hand is like a snake's skin. My knees are pink floating islands. Your face is like an apple tree netted under.'“也就在这儿，”吉尼说，“也就这会儿。但是很快我们就要离去。很快柯里小姐就会吹响她的哨子。我们要去散步。我们会分开的。你要去上学。你会遇见戴着十字架、扎着白领带的男老师。我会在东海岸的一所学校遇见一位女老师，她总是坐在亚历山大皇后的画像下面。那是我要去的地方，也是苏珊和罗达要去的地方。这里只是暂时；这会儿只是暂时。现在我们躺在醋栗树丛下，每当微风吹动，我们都全身落满光斑。我的手像蛇皮。我的膝盖是漂浮着的粉红色岛屿。你的脸像底下张着网的苹果树。”

'The heat is going,' said Bernard, 'from the Jungle. The leaves flap black wings over us. Miss Curry has blown her whistle on the terrace. We must creep out from the awning of the currant leaves and stand upright. There are twigs in your hair, Jinny. There is a green caterpillar on your neck. We must form, two by two. Miss Curry is taking us for a brisk walk, while Miss Hudson sits at her desk settling her accounts.'“炎热正在消退，”伯纳德说，“即将退出这片丛林。树叶在我们头上拍打着黑色的翅膀。柯里小姐在台阶上吹响了哨子。我们必须从醋栗树叶的遮篷里钻出去，然后站起身来。吉尼，你的头发上有些小树枝。你的脖子上有一只绿色的毛毛虫。我们必须列队，两两对齐。柯里小姐带着我们轻轻松松地散步，而赫德森小姐则坐在桌边忙着计算她的账目。”

'It is dull,' said Jinny, 'walking along the high road with no windows to look at, with no bleared eyes of blue glass let into the pavement.'“真是无聊，”吉尼说，“沿着大马路散步，却没有橱窗让人看看，也没有像模糊的眼睛一样的蓝玻璃镶嵌在人行道上。”

'We must form into pairs,' said Susan, 'and walk in order, not shuffling our feet, not lagging, with Louis going first to lead us, because Louis is alert and not a wool-gatherer.'“我们必须排成两人一队，”苏珊说，“按着秩序走，不拖沓，不掉队，路易斯先头领路，因为路易斯很机灵，不会心不在焉。”

'Since I am supposed,' said Neville, 'to be too delicate to go with them, since I get so easily tired and then am sick, I will use this hour of solitude, this reprieve from conversation, to coast round the purlieus of the house and recover, if I can, by standing on the same stair half-way up the landing, what I felt when I heard about the dead man through the swing-door last night when cook was shoving in and out the dampers. He was found with his throat cut. The apple-tree leaves became fixed in the sky; the moon glared; I was unable to lift my foot up the stair. He was found in the gutter. His blood gurgled down the gutter. His jowl was white as a dead codfish. I shall call this stricture, this rigidity, "death among the apple trees" for ever. There were the floating, pale—grey clouds; and the immitigable tree; the implacable tree with its greaved silver bark. The ripple of my life was unavailing. I was unable to pass by. There was an obstacle. "I cannot surmount this unintelligible obstacle," I said. And the others passed on. But we are doomed, all of us, by the apple trees, by the immitigable tree which we cannot pass.“既然人家认为，”内维尔说，“我太柔弱，不能跟他们一起散步，既然我很容易疲劳，一疲劳接着就会生病，那么我要利用这独处的一个小时，无需交谈的这段间歇，绕着房子周边随便走走，要是有可能，我还要站在扶梯中央的同一磴台阶上，重温一下昨晚我透过弹簧门听到人们谈论那个死人时的感受，当时厨子正在进进出出地推拉风门。有人发现他被割了喉。苹果树的叶子在天空中一动不动；月亮异常明亮；我的脚再也无力登上下一个台阶。他的尸体是在排水沟里被人发现的。他的血顺着排水沟汩汩地流。他的双下巴白森森的，好像一条死鳕鱼。这样的非难，这样的冷酷，我会永远记住这‘苹果树下的谋杀’。天上飘着灰白色的云朵；地上有棵怨忿不平的树；那棵怨忿而无以平复的树翘起了银色的树皮。我生命的浪花徒劳无益。我无法袖手旁观。有一道障碍。‘我无法越过这道难以理解的障碍。’我说道。而其他人又继续向前了。但是我们在劫难逃，每个人都算上，那些苹果树，那棵怨忿而无以平复的树，我们都无法越过。

'Now the stricture and rigidity are over; and I will continue to make my survey of the purlieus of the house in the late afternoon, in the sunset, when the sun makes oleaginous spots on the linoleum, and a crack of light kneels on the wall, making the chair legs look broken.'“现在，非难与冷酷已经成为过去；我要继续视察房子的周边，时间到了下半晌，夕阳西下，阳光在漆布上面聚成油亮亮的斑点，还有一绺光线在墙上做出跪拜的姿势，让椅子腿看着像断了似的。”

'I saw Florrie in the kitchen garden,' said Susan, 'as we came back from our walk, with the washing blown out round her, the pyjamas, the drawers, the night-gowns blown tight. And Ernest kissed her. He was in his green baize apron, cleaning silver; and his mouth was sucked like a purse in wrinkles and he seized her with the pyjamas blown out hard between them. He was blind as a bull, and she swooned in anguish, only little veins streaking her white cheeks red. Now though they pass plates of bread and butter and cups of milk at tea-time I see a crack in the earth and hot steam hisses up; and the urn roars as Ernest roared, and I am blown out hard like the pyjamas, even while my teeth meet in the soft bread and butter, and I lap the sweet milk. I am not afraid of heat, nor of the frozen winter. Rhoda dreams, sucking a crust soaked in milk; Louis regards the wall opposite with snail-green eyes; Bernard moulds his bread into pellets and calls them "people". Neville with his clean and decisive ways has finished. He has rolled his napkin and slipped it through the silver ring. Jinny spins her fingers on the table-cloth, as if they were dancing in the sunshine, pirouetting. But I am not afraid of the heat or of the frozen winter.'“我们散步回来的时候，”苏珊说，“我看见弗洛里在家庭菜园，四周都是被风吹起的晾晒的衣物，成套的睡衣裤啦，内裤啦，睡衣啦，都被风吹得鼓鼓的。欧内斯特吻了她。他系着绿色的粗呢围裙，在洗刷银器；他嘴巴撅起，像个满是褶子的钱袋；他隔着被风吹得鼓鼓的睡衣裤抓住她。他莽撞得像一头公牛，她着恼地晕了过去，脸颊煞白，只有细小的血管渗出一点红色。这会儿正是下午茶时间，他们端过来一盘一盘的面包和黄油，一杯一杯的牛奶，我却看见地上裂了一道缝隙，热气嘶嘶地向上冒；茶壶呼哧呼哧地直叫，就跟刚才欧内斯特的吼叫一样，虽然我牙咬着柔软的面包和黄油，我嘴舔着甜甜的牛奶，我却感觉自己就像那些睡衣，被风吹得鼓鼓的。我不怕炎热，也不怕冰冷的冬天。罗达一边做梦一边舔着蘸了牛奶的面包皮；路易斯蜗牛似的绿眼睛瞅着对面的墙；伯纳德把他的面包揉成一粒一粒，称它们为‘芸芸众生’。内维尔干净利落地结束了他的下午茶。他把他的餐巾卷了起来，不声不响地套上了银圈。吉尼让她的手指在桌布上旋转，好似它们正在阳光下单脚尖点地，舞个不停。我不怕炎热，也不怕冰冷的冬天。”

'Now,' said Louis, 'we all rise; we all stand up. Miss Curry spreads wide the black book on the harmonium. It is difficult not to weep as we sing, as we pray that God may keep us safe while we sleep, calling ourselves little children. When we are sad and trembling with apprehension it is sweet to sing together, leaning slightly, I towards Susan, Susan towards Bernard, clasping hands, afraid of much, I of my accent, Rhoda of figures; yet resolute to conquer.'“现在，”路易斯说，“我们全都起身；我们全都站起来。柯里小姐把簧风琴上面那个黑本子完全摊开。当我们唱起颂歌；当我们自称小孩子，祈祷上帝在我们睡着时保佑我们平安，这时想不哭泣也难。当我们因为忧心忡忡而悲伤、发抖时，一起唱歌多么甜蜜。我们轻轻偎依着，我挨着苏珊，苏珊挨着伯纳德；我们手握着手，心事重重，我担心我的口音，罗达害怕那些数字；但是我们有决心征服一切。”

'We troop upstairs like ponies,' said Bernard, 'stamping, clattering one behind another to take our turns in the bathroom. We buffet, we tussle, we spring up and down on the hard, white beds. My turn has come. I come now.“我们列队上楼，好像小马驹，”伯纳德说，“噔噔噔，得得得，一个接一个，轮着进浴室。我们推搡着，扭打着，在洁白的硬板床上蹦来蹦去。终于轮到我了。我来了。

'Mrs Constable, girt in a bath-towel, takes her lemon-coloured sponge and soaks it in water; it turns chocolate-brown; it drips; and, holding it high above me, shivering beneath her, she squeezes it. Water pours down the runnel of my spine. Bright arrows of sensation shoot on either side. I am covered with warm flesh. My dry crannies are wetted; my cold body is warmed; it is sluiced and gleaming. Water descends and sheets me like an eel. Now hot towels envelop me, and their roughness, as I rub my back, makes my blood purr. Rich and heavy sensations form on the roof of my mind; down showers the day—the woods; and Elvedon; Susan and the pigeon. Pouring down the walls of my mind, running together, the day falls copious, resplendent. Now I tie my pyjamas loosely round me, and lie under this thin sheet afloat in the shallow light which is like a film of water drawn over my eyes by a wave. I hear through it far off, far away, faint and far, the chorus beginning; wheels; dogs; men shouting; church bells; the chorus beginning.'“腰上围着浴巾的康斯特布尔太太，拿着她柠檬色的海绵，把它浸到水中；它立时变成了巧克力似的棕色；它滴着水；她把它高高地举到我的头上——我在她的手下直打颤——然后一捏。水流顺着我的脊柱淌下来。身体两侧猛地打着激灵。我被披上一层暖和的皮肉。我身上干燥的角落都淋湿了；我冰凉的身体暖和过来了；冲洗过后，皮肤闪闪发亮。水流冲下来，我像一条鳗鱼被裹在里面。现在，几条热毛巾搭在我身上，当我擦背的时候，那种粗糙的感觉弄得我血液沸腾。丰富而深沉的感觉涌现在我心灵的顶层；这一天的经历——那片树林、埃尔夫顿、苏珊和那只鸽子——纷纷扬扬地落了下来。种种感觉交汇在一起，沿着我心灵的墙壁倾泻而下，这一天的经历那么丰富，那么多彩。现在我身上系着宽松的睡衣裤，躺在浮在微光中的这床薄被单下面，它像海浪激起的一层薄水花蒙在我的眼睛上。透过它，我听见远远地，远远地，微弱而遥远地传来合唱开始的声音，车轮声，犬吠声，人们的呼号声，教堂的钟声。合唱开始了。”

'As I fold up my frock and my chemise,' said Rhoda, 'so I put off my hopeless desire to be Susan, to be Jinny. But I will stretch my toes so that they touch the rail at the end of the bed; I will assure myself, touching the rail, of something hard. Now I cannot sink; cannot altogether fall through the thin sheet now. Now I spread my body on this frail mattress and hang suspended. I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. All is soft, and bending. Walls and cupboards whiten and bend their yellow squares on top of which a pale glass gleams. Out of me now my mind can pour. I can think of my Armadas sailing on the high waves. I am relieved of hard contacts and collisions. I sail on alone under the white cliffs. Oh, but I sink, I fall! That is the corner of the cupboard; that is the nursery looking—glass. But they stretch, they elongate. I sink down on the black plumes of sleep; its thick wings are pressed to my eyes. Travelling through darkness I see the stretched flower-beds, and Mrs Constable runs from behind the corner of the pampas-grass to say my aunt has come to fetch me in a carriage. I mount; I escape; I rise on spring-heeled boots over the tree-tops. But I am now fallen into the carriage at the hall door, where she sits nodding yellow plumes with eyes hard like glazed marbles. Oh, to awake from dreaming! Look, there is the chest of drawers. Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.'“我把连衣裙和衬裙叠了起来，”罗达说，“也打消了我要成为苏珊、成为吉尼的无望的念头。但是我要伸出脚趾，够到床尾的栏杆；够到栏杆，我会让自己有种踏实的感觉。现在我不能沉没了；不能整个陷到薄薄的被单下面了。现在我在这不牢靠的床垫上舒展全身，让自己悬在那儿。现在我在大地之上。我不再是站立的姿势，不再有击打和伤害。一切都柔和而弯曲。墙壁和橱柜变成了白色，黄色的边边角角都曲曲弯弯，顶上一面灰白色的镜子发着微光。现在我的心灵可以尽情遨游了。我可以想象我的无敌舰队正航行在惊涛骇浪之上。我避开了那些劳神的应酬和冲突。我在白色的悬崖下孤身远航。噢，但是我在下沉，我在下落！那是橱柜的一角；那是婴儿室的镜子。它们都在伸展，它们都在延长。我沉陷在睡眠的黑色羽毛中；它密实的翅膀紧紧贴着我的眼睛。我在黑暗中穿行，我看见绵延的花坛，康斯特布尔太太从长着蒲苇的那个角落跑出来，她说，我的姑妈已经坐着马车来接我了。我上车了；我溜掉了；我踩着弹簧跟的靴子，掠过树梢。但是此时，我被扔进了大门口的马车里，她坐在车里面，晃了晃头上的黄色羽饰，冷冷的目光像发亮的大理石。噢，从梦中醒来吧！瞧，这是带抽屉的衣橱。让我把自己从这海浪中拉出来吧。可是它们向我压过来；它们把我卷到巨大的波峰之间；我被掀翻了；我被摔倒了；我被扯进这连绵的光线之中，连绵的海浪里，永无尽头的小路上，人们追啊，追啊。”

The sun rose higher. Blue waves, green waves swept a quick fan over the beach, circling the spike of sea-holly and leaving shallow pools of light here and there on the sand. A faint black rim was left behind them. The rocks which had been misty and soft hardened and were marked with red clefts.

太阳升得更高了。蓝色和绿色的海浪，像一把迅捷的扇子扫过海岸，同时绕着刺芹的花穗，在沙滩上留下此一处彼一处光亮的浅水洼。隐约可见海浪退却之后留下的一条黑色印迹。原本迷离模糊的岩石轮廓变得清晰了，红色的裂缝历历可见。

Sharp stripes of shadow lay on the grass, and the dew dancing on the tips of the flowers and leaves made the garden like a mosaic of single sparks not yet formed into one whole. The birds, whose breasts were specked canary and rose, now sang a strain or two together, wildly, like skaters rollicking arm-in-arm, and were suddenly silent, breaking asunder.

一条条分明的暗影投在草地上，在花心和草尖上跳舞的露珠使得花园看上去像是一幅只有斑斑点点而尚未形成整体的镶嵌画。那些胸脯上点缀着淡黄和玫瑰色彩的鸟儿，现在唱起了一两段小曲儿，它们齐声高歌，好像滑冰的人手挽着手在欢闹，接着突然沉静下来，各自散去。

The sun laid broader blades upon the house. The light touched something green in the window corner and made it a lump of emerald, a cave of pure green like stoneless fruit. It sharpened the edges of chairs and tables and stitched white table-cloths with fine gold wires. As the light increased a bud here and there split asunder and shook out flowers, green veined and quivering, as if the effort of opening had set them rocking, and pealing a faint carillon as they beat their frail clappers against their white walls. Everything became softly amorphous, as if the china of the plate flowed and the steel of the knife were liquid. Meanwhile the concussion of the waves breaking fell with muffled thuds, like logs falling, on the shore.

太阳普照着那幢房子。阳光触到窗角某个绿色的东西，把它变成了一块翡翠，像一枚无核的果，一汪翠绿。阳光把桌椅的棱角变得更加分明，它给洁白的桌布绣上了细细的金色丝线。随着阳光增强，这里或那里的花蕾一一绽开，吐出花朵；初开的花朵渗有绿色的纹络，还在抖个不停，仿佛吐蕊付出的气力使它们一下子站不稳；它们柔弱的钟锤撞击着雪白的钟壁，发出微弱的鸣响。每一样东西都变得影影绰绰，形状无定，碗碟的瓷仿佛在流动，刀叉的钢仿佛变成了液体。同时，那海浪碎裂的震荡声发出沉闷的回响，好像原木滚落在海岸上。

'Now,' said Bernard, 'the time has come. The day has come. The cab is at the door. My huge box bends George's bandy-legs even wider. The horrible ceremony is over, the tips, and the good-byes in the hall. Now there is this gulping ceremony with my mother, this hand-shaking ceremony with my father; now I must go on waving, I must go on waving, till we turn the corner. Now that ceremony is over. Heaven be praised, all ceremonies are over. I am alone; I am going to school for the first time.“现在，”伯纳德说，“时间到了。白天已经来临。出租马车停在门口。我的大箱子压得乔治的罗圈腿更弯曲了。讨厌的仪式结束了，是提建议，以及大厅里道别。现在是跟我母亲哭哭啼啼的分别仪式，跟我父亲握手道别的仪式；现在我必须不停地挥手，必须不停地挥手，直到过了拐弯。现在，那套仪式总算结束了。谢天谢地，所有的仪式都已结束。我孤身一人；我即将第一次踏入校门。

'Everybody seems to be doing things for this moment only; and never again. Never again. The urgency of it all is fearful. Everybody knows I am going to school, going to school for the first time. "That boy is going to school for the first time," says the housemaid, cleaning the steps. I must not cry. I must behold them indifferently. Now the awful portals of the station gape; "the moon-faced clock regards me.”I must make phrases and phrases and so interpose something hard between myself and the stare of housemaids, the stare of clocks, staring faces, indifferent faces, or I shall cry. There is Louis, there is Neville, in long coats, carrying handbags, by the booking-office. They are composed. But they look different.'“似乎人人都只是为了此刻在忙活；而此刻永不再来。永不再来。此番紧迫令人胆怯。人人都知道我要踏入校门，第一次踏入校门。‘那孩子是第一次去上学。’正在擦着楼梯的女佣说道。我可不能哭。我必须满不在乎地瞅着她们。现在，车站的入口可怕地瞪着眼睛；‘那圆脸的钟打量着我。’我必须没话找话，编出一些词儿，这样就为我自己竖起了一道坚固的防线，隔开了盯着我看的女佣，隔开了钟的注视，隔开了目不转睛地看着的脸，漠然的脸，不然我会哭出来的。路易斯也在，内维尔也在，穿着长外套，拎着手提包，呆在售票室边上。他们镇定自若。但两人看上去各有不同。”

'Here is Bernard,' said Louis. 'He is composed; he is easy. He swings his bag as he walks. I will follow Bernard, because he is not afraid. We are drawn through the booking-office on to the platform as a stream draws twigs and straws round the piers of a bridge. There is the very powerful, bottle-green engine without a neck, all back and thighs, breathing steam. The guard blows his whistle; the flag is dipped; without an effort, of its own momentum, like an avalanche started by a gentle push, we start forward. Bernard spreads a rug and plays knuckle-bones. Neville reads. London crumbles. London heaves and surges. There is a bristling of chimneys and towers. There a white church; there a mast among the spires. There a canal. Now there are open spaces with asphalt paths upon which it is strange that people should now be walking. There is a hill striped with red houses. A man crosses a bridge with a dog at his heels. Now the red boy begins firing at a pheasant. The blue boy shoves him aside. "My uncle is the best shot in England. My cousin is Master of Foxhounds."Boasting begins. And I cannot boast, for my father is a banker in Brisbane, and I speak with an Australian accent.'“伯纳德来了。”路易斯说。“他镇定自若；他不慌不忙。他边走边晃动着他的提包。我要跟着伯纳德，因为他什么都不怕。我们被推涌着穿过售票室来到月台上，好像一条溪流把细枝和草芥推涌到桥墩周围。那儿停着强健有力的深绿色机车，没长脖子，只有脊背和大腿，正呼哧呼哧地喘气。警卫吹响了他的哨子；信号旗放了下来；好像轻轻一推就会引发雪崩一样，我们的机车顺势毫不费力地出发向前了。伯纳德铺开毛毯，玩起了弹指球。内维尔在看书。伦敦在零星出现。伦敦渐入眼帘，又扑面而至。那儿的烟囱和塔楼林立如直立的毛发。那儿是一座白色的教堂；那儿有一根旗杆高出塔尖之上。那儿是一条运河。那儿是开阔的空地，有柏油路穿过，奇怪的是这会儿还有人在路上散步。那儿是一座小山，有红色的房屋穿插其间。一个男子在过桥，身后紧跟着一条狗。瞧，红衣男孩正准备向一只野鸡开火。蓝衣男孩把他推到一边。‘我舅舅是英格兰最棒的射手。我表哥是猎狐犬大师。’吹嘘开始了。但是我却无可吹嘘，因为我父亲是布里斯班的银行家，我说话带有澳大利亚口音。”

'After all this hubbub,' said Neville, 'all this scuffling and hubbub, we have arrived. This is indeed a moment—this is indeed a solemn moment. I come, like a lord to his halls appointed. That is our founder; our illustrious founder, standing in the courtyard with one foot raised. I salute our founder. A noble Roman air hangs over these austere quadrangles. Already the lights are lit in the form rooms. Those are laboratories perhaps; and that a library, where I shall explore the exactitude of the Latin language, and step firmly upon the well-laid sentences, and pronounce the explicit, the sonorous hexameters of Virgil, of Lucretius; and chant with a passion that is never obscure or formless the loves of Catullus, reading from a big book, a quarto with margins. I shall lie, too, in the fields among the tickling grasses. I shall lie with my friends under the towering elm trees.“经过这一番折腾，”内维尔说，“经过这一番纷乱嘈杂之后，我们总算到了。这真是——这真是一个庄严的时刻。我来了，像一位领主来到他分封的领地。那是我们这所学校的创始人，大名鼎鼎的创始人，他正站在院子里，抬起一只脚。我向我们的创始人行了礼。一股高贵的古罗马气息笼罩着这片肃穆的四方院落。各班教室里已经点上了灯。那些大概是实验室；那是一间图书室，我要在里面钻研纯正的拉丁文，牢牢掌握那些精致的语句，朗读维吉尔、卢克莱修清晰、响亮的六音步诗行；翻开一部宽边四开本的大书，用我永不减退、永不消失的激情吟诵卡图卢斯的爱情诗篇。我还要在田野里躺下来，躺在刺痒人的草丛之间。我要和朋友们一起躺在高耸的榆树下面。

'Behold, the Headmaster. Alas, that he should excite my ridicule. He is too sleek, he is altogether too shiny and black, like some statue in a public garden. And on the left side of his waistcoat, his taut, his drum-like waistcoat, hangs a crucifix.'“瞧，那是校长。哎，他恐怕要激起我的嘲笑了。他保养得太好了，整个人过于油光黑亮，好像公园里的一尊雕像。他的马甲，鼓面似的绷在身上，左侧挂着一个十字架。”

'Old Crane,' said Bernard, 'now rises to address us. Old Crane, the Headmaster, has a nose like a mountain at sunset, and a blue cleft in his chin, like a wooded ravine, which some tripper has fired; like a wooded ravine seen from the train window. He sways slightly, mouthing out his tremendous and sonorous words. I love tremendous and sonorous words. But his words are too hearty to be true. Yet he is by this time convinced of their truth. And when he leaves the room, lurching rather heavily from side to side, and hurls his way through the swing-doors, all the masters, lurching rather heavily from side to side, hurl themselves also through the swing-doors. This is our first night at school, apart from our sisters.'“老克兰，”伯纳德说，“这会儿站了起来，要对我们训话。老克兰，也就是我们的校长，鼻子长得像夕阳中的大山，下巴上有一道乌青的裂纹，像林木繁茂的峡谷，被某个旅行者放火烧掉了一块；像是透过火车车窗望见的林木繁茂的峡谷。他微微摇摆，口中滔滔不绝地吐出精彩而宏亮的话语。我喜欢精彩而宏亮的话语。但是他的话语过于亲切，反而听着不真实。不过这会儿他倒是确信自己说的是真话。随后，他相当吃力地左摇右晃，脚步蹒跚，撞开弹簧门离开了这间屋子，全体老师也都相当吃力地左摇右晃，脚步蹒跚，撞开弹簧门，出去了。这是我们与姐妹分离之后学校生活的第一个夜晚。”

'This is my first night at school,' said Susan, 'away from my father, away from my home. My eyes swell; my eyes prick with tears. I hate the smell of pine and linoleum. I hate the wind—bitten shrubs and the sanitary tiles. I hate the cheerful jokes and the glazed look of everyone. I left my squirrel and my doves for the boy to look after. The kitchen door slams, and shot patters among the leaves when Percy fires at the rooks. All here is false; all is meretricious. Rhoda and Jinny sit far off in brown serge, and look at Miss Lambert who sits under a picture of Queen Alexandra reading from a book before her. There is also a blue scroll of needlework embroidered by some old girl. If I do not purse my lips, if I do not screw my handkerchief, I shall cry.'“这是我学校生活的第一个夜晚，”苏珊说，“远离我的父亲，远离我的家。我的眼睛肿了；泪水刺痛我的眼睛。我讨厌松木和油地毯的气味。我讨厌风——冻伤的灌木，还有那些洁净的瓷砖。我讨厌那些逗乐的玩笑话和每个人脸上那木然的表情。我把我的松鼠和鸽子托付给了那个男孩来照看。厨房的门咣地一声，树叶中啪地一声枪响，是珀西在射击那些秃鼻乌鸦。这里的一切都是虚假的；一切都是华而不实的。罗达和吉尼穿着褐色的哔叽衣，远远地坐在那儿，瞅着坐在亚历山大皇后相片下面的兰伯特小姐，她正在读面前的一本书。那儿还有一幅蓝色的针线卷轴，不知是哪一位老小姐的刺绣作品。要是我不撅起嘴，要是我不拧紧手帕，我会哭出来的。”

'The purple light,' said Rhoda, 'in Miss Lambert's ring passes to and fro across the black stain on the white page of the Prayer Book. It is a vinous, it is an amorous light. Now that our boxes are unpacked in the dormitories, we sit herded together under maps of the entire world. There are desks with wells for the ink. We shall write our exercises in ink here. But here I am nobody. I have no face. This great company, all dressed in brown serge, has robbed me of my identity. We are all callous, unfriended. I will seek out a face, a composed, a monumental face, and will endow it with omniscience, and wear it under my dress like a talisman and then (I promise this) I will find some dingle in a wood where I can display my assortment of curious treasures. I promise myself this. So I will not cry.'“兰伯特小姐戒指上那紫色的光，”罗达说，“在祈祷书洁白的书页上那黑色的污迹上面来来回回地闪过。那是葡萄酒似红色的、含情脉脉的光。因为行李箱在寝室里都安顿好了，所以我们聚拢在一起，坐在一幅幅世界地图的下面。那儿有一张张桌子，桌上都有墨水池。我们要在这儿用墨水写作业。可是在这儿，我默默无闻。我毫无尊严。这么一大群伙伴，都穿着褐色的哔叽衣，他们夺走了我的身份。我们都是冷冰冰的，谁也不把谁当朋友。我要找到一张脸，一张镇定的、纪念碑似的脸，我要赋予它全知全觉，还要像护身符一样戴在身上，然后（我保证），我要在树林里找到一处幽谷，在那儿把我各式各样的奇珍异宝展示出来。我向自己保证要这样做。这样我才不会哭出来。”

'That dark woman,' said Jinny, 'with high cheek-bones, has a shiny dress, like a shell, veined, for wearing in the evening. That is nice for summer, but for winter I should like a thin dress shot with red threads that would gleam in the firelight. Then when the lamps were lit, I should put on my red dress and it would be thin as a veil, and would wind about my body, and billow out as I came into the room, pirouetting. It would make a flower shape as I sank down, in the middle of the room, on a gilt chair. But Miss Lambert wears an opaque dress, that falls in a cascade from her snow-white ruffle as she sits under a picture of Queen Alexandra pressing one white finger firmly on the page. And we pray.'“那个黑皮肤的女人，”吉尼说，“长着高颧骨，她有一身亮闪闪的礼服，像带纹络的贝壳，准备在傍晚时穿上。那在夏天还不错，但在冬天我还是喜欢一件薄礼服，用红线点缀，映着炉火，闪闪烁烁。那么当灯点亮的时候，我就穿上这件红色礼服，它像纱一样薄，围在我的身上，当我脚尖点地旋进屋里时，它会飘扬起来。当我在屋子中央一把镀金椅子上坐下来时，它会散成一朵花的模样。但是兰伯特小姐坐在一幅亚历山大皇后的相片下面，一只洁白的手指稳稳按住书页，身上那件晦暗的礼服，从她雪白的褶裥饰边瀑布一样倾泻下来。并且我们做祈祷。”

'Now we march, two by two,' said Louis, 'orderly, processional, into chapel. I like the dimness that falls as we enter the sacred building. I like the orderly progress. We file in; we seat ourselves. We put off our distinctions as we enter. I like it now, when, lurching slightly, but only from his momentum, Dr Crane mounts the pulpit and reads the lesson from a Bible spread on the back of the brass eagle. I rejoice; my heart expands in his bulk, in his authority. He lays the whirling dust clouds in my tremulous, my ignominiously agitated mind—how we danced round the Christmas tree and handing parcels they forgot me, and the fat woman said, "This little boy has no present," and gave me a shiny Union Jack from the top of the tree, and I cried with fury—to be remembered with pity. Now all is laid by his authority, his crucifix, and I feel come over me the sense of the earth under me, and my roots going down and down till they wrap themselves round some hardness at the centre. I recover my continuity, as he reads. I become a figure in the procession, a spoke in the huge wheel that turning, at last erects me, here and now. I have been in the dark; I have been hidden; but when the wheel turns (as he reads) I rise into this dim light where I just perceive, but scarcely, kneeling boys, pillars and memorial brasses. There is no crudity here, no sudden kisses.'“现在我们列队，俩俩一排，”路易斯说，“整齐有序地走进礼拜堂。我喜欢进入这幢神圣建筑时突然降临的朦胧感。我喜欢这种有序的行进。我们鱼贯而入；我们各就各位。一进到这里，我们就抛开了种种特性。我现在喜欢这样：克兰博士有点踉跄地——只是出于惯性——登上讲坛，照着那只铜鹰背上翻开的一本《圣经》念起经文来。我感到喜乐；他的大块头，他的威严，都令我心情畅快。他平息了我既敏感又羞愧不安的心灵中那久久萦绕的阴云——那次，我们围着圣诞树手舞足蹈，分发礼包，而他们却把我给忘了。‘这个小男孩还没得到礼物哩。’说着，那个胖女人从树梢上摘下一面亮闪闪的国旗递给我，而我恼怒地大哭起来。——由于怜悯被记起。现在，一切都被他的威严、他的十字架平息了，我体验到整个人踏在实地的感觉，我的根扎下去，扎下去，终于盘绕在地心的坚实处。随着他念经文的声音，我重新找回了完整的我。我变成了队列中的一员，转动的巨大车轮中的一根轮辐，我终于昂起了头，此地，此时。我一直在黑暗中；我一直躲躲藏藏；但是当车轮转动（在他念经文的时候），我昂首踏入这片朦胧的光影之中，我才意识到，刚刚意识到，那些跪着的男孩子，那些柱子和黄铜祭器。这儿没有生硬的举止，没有突如其来的亲吻。”

'The brute menaces my liberty,' said Neville, 'when he prays. Unwarmed by imagination, his words fall cold on my head like paving-stones, while the gilt cross heaves on his waistcoat. The words of authority are corrupted by those who speak them. I gibe and mock at this sad religion, at these tremulous, grief-stricken figures advancing, cadaverous and wounded, down a white road shadowed by fig trees where boys sprawl in the dust—naked boys; and goatskins distended with wine hang at the tavern door. I was in Rome travelling with my father at Easter; and the trembling figure of Christ's mother was borne niddle-noddling along the streets; there went by also the stricken figure of Christ in a glass case.“那笨蛋害我不自在，”内维尔说，“当他做祷告的时候。他那缺乏想象力的话语，像铺路石一样冷冰冰地落在我的头上，而那枚镀金十字架在他的马甲上起起伏伏。那些威严的话语被说话的人玷污了。我要嘲笑、挖苦这可悲的宗教，这些敏感、悲痛欲绝的人，他们面如死灰、伤痕累累，沿着无花果树荫下一条白色的道路踽踽前行，尘土路上趴着一些男孩——赤身裸体的男孩；装满葡萄酒的羊皮酒囊挂在酒馆的门上。复活节时我曾跟我的父亲一道在罗马旅行；满大街频频点头的都是基督之母那颤颤巍巍的形象；还有装在玻璃盒子里的基督受难的形象招摇过市。

'Now I will lean sideways as if to scratch my thigh. So I shall see Percival. There he sits, upright among the smaller fry. He breathes through his straight nose rather heavily. His blue and oddly inexpressive eyes are fixed with pagan indifference upon the pillar opposite. He would make an admirable churchwarden. He should have a birch and beat little boys for misdemeanours. He is allied with the Latin phrases on the memorial brasses. He sees nothing; he hears nothing. He is remote from us all in a pagan universe. But look—he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gestures one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime. Dalton, Jones, Edgar and Bateman flick their hands to the back of their necks likewise. But they do not succeed.'“这会儿我要向旁边侧侧身，作势搔搔我的大腿。这样我就会看见珀西瓦尔。他坐在那儿，直直地坐在比他小的孩子们中间。他直挺的鼻子一呼一吸，相当吃力。他那双古怪的、毫无表情的蓝眼睛一动不动地盯着对面的柱子，像个事不关己的异教徒。他有望成为一位令人仰慕的教堂委员啊。他还可能操起桦条，抽打那些行为不端的小孩子呢。他是黄铜祭器上那些拉丁词语的同盟。他一无所见；他一无所闻。他在一个异教的世界，与我们所有人都相隔遥遥。但是瞧啊——他一只手轻轻拍向他的脖颈后。这样的姿势，简直会让人无可救药地爱上一辈子的。道尔顿、琼斯、埃德加和贝特曼也都同样把手轻轻拍向自己的脖颈后。但是他们做得并不成功。”

'At last,' said Bernard, 'the growl ceases. The sermon ends. He has minced the dance of the white butterflies at the door to powder. His rough and hairy voice is like an unshaven chin. Now he lurches back to his seat like a drunken sailor. It is an action that all the other masters will try to imitate; but, being flimsy, being floppy, wearing grey trousers, they will only succeed in making themselves ridiculous. I do not despise them. Their antics seem pitiable in my eyes. I note the fact for future reference with many others in my notebook. When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases. Under B shall come "Butterfly powder". If, in my novel, I describe the sun on the window-sill, I shall look under B and find butterfly powder. That will be useful. The tree "shades the window with green fingers". That will be useful. But alas! I am so soon distracted—by a hair like twisted candy, by Celia's Prayer Book, ivory covered. Louis' can contemplate nature, unwinking, by the hour. Soon I fail, unless talked to. "The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence."That will be useful.'“最终，”伯纳德说，“咆哮声停了。布道结束了。他把门口白蝴蝶的舞蹈绞成了粉末。他嗓音粗鲁、刺耳，像未剃的下巴似的。现在他一摇一晃回到座位上，像个醉了酒的水手。这是其他的老师们都愿意尽力模仿的动作；但是那些人一个个病怏怏、软塌塌，穿着灰色裤子，他们只会让自己看起来不伦不类。我并不鄙视他们。他们的滑稽举动在我眼中显得那么可怜。我把这件事和其他很多事记在我的笔记本上，以备将来参考。等我长大后，我要带上一个笔记本——一个有很多页的厚本子，上面用字母标明了顺序。我要加进我的词语。在B条下面写上‘蝴蝶粉末’。如果在我的小说中，我想描写窗台上的阳光，我就会查看B条下面，找到蝴蝶粉末。这会用得着的。树‘用绿色的手指遮住了窗’。这会用得着的。可是，哎！这么快我就被分散了心思——因为糖果拧了劲儿似的一根头发，因为西莉亚那本象牙封面的祈祷书。路易斯能一小时一小时、眼睛一眨不眨地静观大自然。我很快就不行了，除非有人说说话。‘我心灵的湖，没有被船桨划破，在平静中起起伏伏，很快沉入一片馨宁的梦幻。’这会用得着的。”

'Now we move out of this cool temple, into the yellow playing-fields,' said Louis. 'And, as it is a half-holiday (the Duke's birthday) we will settle among the long grasses, while they play cricket. Could I be "they" I would choose it; I would buckle on my pads and stride across the playing-field at the head of the batsmen. Look now, how everybody follows Percival. He is heavy. He walks clumsily down the field, through the long grass, to where the great elm trees stand. His magnificence is that of some mediaeval commander. A wake of light seems to lie on the grass behind him. Look at us trooping after him, his faithful servants, to be shot like sheep, for he will certainly attempt some forlorn enterprise and die in battle. My heart turns rough; it abrades my side like a file with two edges: one, that I adore his magnificence; the other I despise his slovenly accents—I who am so much his superior—and am jealous.'“现在我们出了这座清凉的庙宇，来到黄色的操场。”路易斯说。“因为今天是半日假（公爵的寿诞），我们要在这片高草丛中玩个痛快，而他们则去打板球。假如我是‘他们’，我也会这样选择；我会扣上护垫，大步穿过操场，走在击球手们的最前头。瞧啊，这会儿大伙儿都跟着珀西瓦尔。他脚步沉重。他笨拙地走下操场，穿过高草，走向那些挺拔的大榆树。他的威武具有某位中世纪长官的派头。他身后的草地上似乎留下一道不灭的光影。瞧瞧我们，列队跟在他的身后，都是他忠实的仆人，将要像羔羊一样被射杀，因为他肯定要投身于某项艰巨的事业而死在战场上。我心潮翻滚；好像有一把双刃锉刀刮擦着我：一方面，我崇拜他的威严；另一方面，我又鄙视他邋里邋遢的腔调——我比他高贵——却又嫉妒他。”

'And now,' said Neville, 'let Bernard begin. Let him burble on, telling us stories, while we lie recumbent. Let him describe what we have all seen so that it becomes a sequence. Bernard says there is always a story. I am a story. Louis is a story. There is the story of the boot-boy, the story of the man with one eye, the story of the woman who sells winkles. Let him burble on with his story while I lie back and regard the stiff-legged figures of the padded batsmen through the trembling grasses. It seems as if the whole world were flowing and curving—on the earth the trees, in the sky the clouds. I look up, through the trees, into the sky. The match seems to be played up there. Faintly among the soft, white clouds I hear the cry "Run", I hear the cry "How's that?"The clouds lose tufts of whiteness as the breeze dishevels them. If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever; if this moment could stay for ever—“那么现在，”内维尔说，“让伯纳德开始吧。让他嘴巴不停地给我们讲故事，我们只管舒服地躺着。让他描述一下我们大家的所见所闻，使它连贯起来。伯纳德说，总有故事可讲。我就是个故事。路易斯是个故事。那个擦鞋童的故事，那个瞎了一只眼的男人的故事，那个卖食用螺的女人的故事。让他嘴巴不停地讲故事吧，我只管仰天躺在这里，瞧着戴着护垫的击球手们穿过颤动的青草时那腿脚僵硬的样子。似乎整个世界都在流动，呈曲线流动——地上那些树，天空那些云。我抬起头来，透过那些树，望向天空。比赛仿佛在那上头进行。隐隐约约地，在柔和的白云之间，我听见‘快跑’的呼喊，我听见‘怎么回事？’的惊叫。微风吹散了云朵，那团团的洁白也随即消失了。要是那片蓝色能保持永远；要是那里的空洞永久存在；要是这一刻能化为永恒——

'But Bernard goes on talking. Up they bubble—images. "Like a camel,"... "a vulture."The camel is a vulture; the vulture a camel; for Bernard is a dangling wire, loose, but seductive. Yes, for when he talks, when he makes his foolish comparisons, a lightness comes over one. One floats, too, as if one were that bubble; one is freed; I have escaped, one feels. Even the chubby little boys (Dalton, Larpent and Baker) feel the same abandonment. They like this better than the cricket. They catch the phrases as they bubble. They let the feathery grasses tickle their noses. And then we all feel Percival lying heavy among us. His curious guffaw seems to sanction our laughter. But now he has rolled himself over in the long grass. He is, I think, chewing a stalk between his teeth. He feels bored; I too feel bored. Bernard at once perceives that we are bored. I detect a certain effort, an extravagance in his phrase, as if he said "Look!"but Percival says "No."For he is always the first to detect insincerity; and is brutal in the extreme. The sentence tails off feebly. Yes, the appalling moment has come when Bernard's power fails him and there is no longer any sequence and he sags and twiddles a bit of string and falls silent, gaping as if about to burst into tears. Among the tortures and devastations of life is this then—our friends are not able to finish their stories.'“但是伯纳德还在滔滔不绝。汩汩冒出的——是意象。‘像一匹骆驼，’......‘一只秃鹫。’骆驼是一只秃鹫；秃鹫也是一匹骆驼；因为伯纳德是一根悬荡的电线，并不牢靠，却富有魅力。真的，当他一开口，当他打起那些愚蠢的比方，你会有一种轻松感。你也会浮起来，仿佛变成了那个气泡；你解脱了；我终于逃脱了，你会有这种感觉。甚至那几个胖乎乎的小男孩（道尔顿、拉本特和贝克）也同样感觉到这种无拘无束。他们觉得这比打板球更好玩。那些词语一冒上来他们就逮个正着。他们让轻柔的小草刺痒他们的鼻子。后来我们都感觉到了珀西瓦尔那笨重的身躯正躺在我们中间。他怪里怪气的狂笑似乎是对我们笑声的认可。但是这会儿他在高草丛中翻过身去。我想，他的牙齿之间正嚼着一截草梗。他感到厌烦；我也感到厌烦。伯纳德立即意识到我们的厌烦。我觉察到他确实很卖力，话语里有点忘乎所以，好像他说道：‘瞧！’但珀西瓦尔说：‘不。’因为他总能首先觉察到别人的虚假；又极其不给情面。接下来的那个句子弱弱地不了了之了。是的，可怕的时刻终于来到了：伯纳德泄了气，说话不再连贯了，他沮丧地捻着几根细绳沉默了，瞪目结舌，仿佛泪水就要夺眶而出。如此看来，在人生的种种磨难和破灭中还包括这样一种情况——我们的朋友甚至不能顺利讲完他们的故事。”

'Now let me try,' said Louis, 'before we rise, before we go to tea, to fix the moment in one effort of supreme endeavour. This shall endure. We are parting; some to tea; some to the nets; I to show my essay to Mr Barker. This will endure. From discord, from hatred (I despise dabblers in imagery—I resent the power of Percival intensely) my shattered mind is pieced together by some sudden perception. I take the trees, the clouds, to be witnesses of my complete integration. I, Louis, I, who shall walk the earth these seventy years, am born entire, out of hatred, out of discord. Here on this ring of grass we have sat together, bound by the tremendous power of some inner compulsion. The trees wave, the clouds pass. The time approaches when these soliloquies shall be shared. We shall not always give out a sound like a beaten gong as one sensation strikes and then another. Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens.“现在让我来试试，”路易斯说，“在我们起身之前，在我们去吃茶点之前，尽最大一份努力来修复这一时刻吧。这会让人很难受。我们各自分手；一些去吃茶点；一些去收网；我要把我的文章交给巴克先生看看。这会让人很难受。经过冲突，经过厌恶（我鄙视那些形象描述方面的半瓶醋——我极其憎恶珀西瓦尔的气焰），我纷乱的心情被某种突然的觉悟平复了。我要那些树、那些云来见证，我已经完全心平气和。我，路易斯，我，将要行走大地70年的我，正从厌恶中，从冲突中完完整整地诞生。在这儿，青草围绕的地方，我们曾坐在一起，受着内心某种巨大力量的驱使。树在摇，云在飘。分享个人独白的时刻到了。我们不要总是像锣似的发泄情绪，敲一下响一声，再敲一下又响一声。孩子们，我们的人生曾像锣一样敲响；自吹自擂；绝望的哀嚎；花园里出其不意的打击。

'Now grass and trees, the travelling air blowing empty spaces in the blue which they then recover, shaking the leaves which then replace themselves, and our ring here, sitting, with our arms binding our knees, hint at some other order, and better, which makes a reason everlastingly. This I see for a second, and shall try tonight to fix in words, to forge in a ring of steel, though Percival destroys it, as he blunders off, crushing the grasses, with the small fry trotting subservient after him. Yet it is Percival I need; for it is Percival who inspires poetry.'“瞧这些草和树，这游荡的空气——蓝天的空穴被它吹破，接着又复原了；树叶被它摇动，接着也自动恢复了静态，还有我们围成的圆圈——我们坐在这儿，手臂拢着膝盖，都在暗示某种另外的秩序，更好的秩序，那是永恒的理性。这一切，我一秒钟就看清了，今晚我要竭力把它表述于词，锻造成一个钢环，虽然珀西瓦尔毁了它，当他踏着青草，踉踉跄跄地走开时，那群小喽啰低声下气、屁颠屁颠地追随在他的身后。不过我倒正需要珀西瓦尔；因为正是珀西瓦尔激发了我的诗意。”

'For how many months,' said Susan, 'for how many years, have I run up these stairs, in the dismal days of winter, in the chilly days of spring? Now it is midsummer. We go upstairs to change into white frocks to play tennis—Jinny and I with Rhoda following after. I count each step as I mount, counting each step something done with. So each night I tear off the old day from the calendar, and screw it tight into a ball. I do this vindictively, while Betty and Clara are on their knees. I do not pray. I revenge myself upon the day. I wreak my spite upon its image. You are dead now, I say, school day, hated day. They have made all the days of June—this is the twenty-fifth—shiny and orderly, with gongs, with lessons, with orders to wash, to change, to work, to eat. We listen to missionaries from China. We drive off in brakes along the asphalt pavement, to attend concerts in halls. We are shown galleries and pictures.“有多少个月，”苏珊说，“有多少年，在阴沉的冬日，在寒冷的春日，我曾登上过这些楼梯？现在到了仲夏。我们上楼换上洁白的连衣裙去打网球——吉尼和我，还有罗达随后跟来。我一边上楼一边数阶梯，把每一级阶梯算作是一件完结的事情。所以每天晚上我从日历牌上撕下刚刚过去的一天，把它揉成紧紧的一个团。在贝蒂和克拉拉跪下来祷告时，我就怀着报复的心情这样做。我不做祷告。我向这天实行报复。我把我的愤恨发泄在它的具体形象上面。现在你终于死掉了，我说，上学的一天，可恨的一天。他们把六月的所有日子——今天25号——都过得熠熠生辉、井井有条，敲锣、上课，有序地洗澡、换衣服、做功课、吃饭。我们聆听着从中国归来的传教士的训话。我们坐上四轮大马车沿着柏油路开拔，去参加大礼堂的音乐会。我们被人引领着看展览、赏名画。

'At home the hay waves over the meadows. My father leans upon the stile, smoking. In the house one door bangs and then another, as the summer air puffs along the empty passages. Some old picture perhaps swings on the wall. A petal drops from the rose in the jar. The farm wagons strew the hedges with tufts of hay. All this I see, I always see, as I pass the looking-glass on the landing, with Jinny in front and Rhoda lagging behind. Jinny dances. Jinny always dances in the hall on the ugly, the encaustic tiles; she turns cartwheels in the playground; she picks some flower forbiddenly, and sticks it behind her ear so that Miss Perry's dark eyes smoulder with admiration, for Jinny, not me. Miss Perry loves Jinny; and I could have loved her, but now love no one, except my father, my doves and the squirrel whom I left in the cage at home for the boy to look after.'“老家那边，草场上面干草起伏。我父亲靠着门梃，抽着烟。屋子里，每当夏日的清风吹过空寂无人的过道时，就会有一扇又一扇门砰然开阖。说不定某幅老照片也在墙上摇摆。一片花瓣从瓶里的玫瑰上落下。农用马车给一道道树篱点缀上一簇簇干草。当我经过楼梯平台的镜子时，吉尼走在前头，罗达落在后面，我看到了这一切，我总能看到这一切。吉尼跳起舞来。吉尼总在大厅里那难看的彩色瓷砖上面跳舞；她常在操场做侧手翻；她时而不顾禁令摘朵花插在耳后，引得佩里小姐乌黑的眼睛燃起羡慕之火，对吉尼，不是对我。佩里小姐喜欢吉尼；我也可能喜欢过她，但是现在我谁也不喜欢，除了我的父亲、我的鸽子和那只松鼠——我把它留在老家的笼子里，由那个小男仆来照看。”

'I hate the small looking-glass on the stairs,' said Jinny. 'It shows our heads only; it cuts off our heads. And my lips are too wide, and my eyes are too close together; I show my gums too much when I laugh. Susan's head, with its fell look, with its grass-green eyes which poets will love, Bernard said, because they fall upon close white stitching, put mine out; even Rhoda's face, mooning, vacant, is completed, like those white petals she used to swim in her bowl. So I skip up the stairs past them, to the next landing, where the long glass hangs and I see myself entire. I see my body and head in one now; for even in this serge frock they are one, my body and my head. Look, when I move my head I ripple all down my narrow body; even my thin legs ripple like a stalk in the wind. I flicker between the set face of Susan and Rhoda's vagueness; I leap like one of those flames that run between the cracks of the earth; I move, I dance; I never cease to move and to dance. I move like the leaf that moved in the hedge as a child and frightened me. I dance over these streaked, these impersonal, distempered walls with their yellow skirting as firelight dances over teapots. I catch fire even from women's cold eyes. When I read, a purple rim runs round the black edge of the textbook. Yet I cannot follow any word through its changes. I cannot follow any thought from present to past. I do not stand lost, like Susan, with tears in my eyes remembering home; or lie, like Rhoda, crumpled among the ferns, staining my pink cotton green, while I dream of plants that flower under the sea, and rocks through which the fish swim slowly. I do not dream.“我讨厌楼梯上的这面小镜子。”吉尼说。“它只照出我们的脑袋；它切掉了我们的脑袋。而且我的嘴唇太厚，我的双眼靠得太近；我在笑的时候牙龈露得太多。苏珊的脑袋，还有那凶恶的神情，及一双草绿色的眼睛，诗人们会爱上的，伯纳德说，因为它们能抓住密实的白针脚，把我的脑袋比下去了；甚至罗达的脸，茫然的、呆呆的，也那么完美，就像曾经在她碗中畅游的那些白色花瓣一样。所以我跳了几级阶梯，越过他们，来到下一个楼梯转角平台，这里挂着一面长镜子，我能看见完整的自己。现在我看见我的身子和脑袋连成一体；即使穿着这件哔叽连衣裙，它们还是一体，我的身子连着我的脑袋。瞧，我一晃脑袋，我整个细小的身子都在微微颤动；甚至我纤瘦的双腿也像风中的草茎微微颤动。我摇曳在苏珊死板的面孔和罗达茫然的神情之间；我跳跃着，像大地的裂缝之间熊熊燃烧的火苗；我晃动着，我舞动着；我从未停止过晃动和跳舞。我晃动着，就像那片树叶，它曾像个孩子似的在树篱中晃动，而且把我吓了一跳。我舞蹈着，跃过这些条纹的，这些冷漠、无情的墙壁和它们黄色的踢脚板，就像炉火舞蹈着跃到茶壶上面一样。我甚至从女人们冷漠的眼神中捕捉到了火花。当我阅读时，课本的黑边闪现着紫色的光环。但我却无法通过各种变形来领悟任何单词。我无法通过把现在时变成过去时来领悟任何思想。我不会失魂落魄地傻站着，像苏珊那样，含着眼泪想家；我也不会躺下来，像罗达那样，蜷缩在羊齿草丛中，梦想着海底开花的植物和鱼儿缓缓从中游过的岩石，结果把我粉红的棉布染成绿色。我不做梦。

'Now let us be quick. Now let me be the first to pull off these coarse clothes. Here are my clean white stockings. Here are my new shoes. I bind my hair with a white ribbon, so that when I leap across the court the ribbon will stream out in a flash, yet curl round my neck, perfectly in its place. Not a hair shall be untidy.'“现在让我们快一些吧。现在让我先脱掉这身粗陋的衣服吧。这是我干干净净的白色长袜。这是我的新鞋。我要用一条白色的丝带扎起我的头发，这样当我蹦蹦跳跳穿过院子时，丝带就会一下子飘起来，而又恰到好处地盘绕在我的脖子上。头发丝毫也不会乱。”

'That is my face,' said Rhoda, 'in the looking-glass behind Susan's shoulder—that face is my face. But I will duck behind her to hide it, for I am not here. I have no face. Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.“那是我的脸，”罗达说，“镜子里苏珊肩后——那张脸是我的脸。但是我要缩到她身后把它藏起来，因为我的人不在这儿。我毫无脸面。别人都有脸；苏珊和吉尼都有脸；她们的人都在这儿。她们的世界是真实的世界。她们要举起的东西都沉甸甸的。她们说‘是’就是是，她们说‘不’就是不；而我游移不定，变来变去，一下子就被人看穿。假如她们碰着一位女佣，她也只是眼瞅着她们而不敢笑。但是她会嘲笑我。有人跟她们说话，她们也知道如何对答。她们笑得真实；她们发火也真实；而我必得先观望一番，等到人家做了以后，我再照着她们的样子做。

'See now with what extraordinary certainty Jinny pulls on her stockings, simply to play tennis. That I admire. But I like Susan's way better, for she is more resolute, and less ambitious of distinction than Jinny. Both despise me for copying what they do; but Susan sometimes teaches me, for instance, how to tie a bow, while Jinny has her own knowledge but keeps it to herself. They have friends to sit by. They have things to say privately in corners. But I attach myself only to names and faces; and hoard them like amulets against disaster. I choose out across the hall some unknown face and can hardly drink my tea when she whose name I do not know sits opposite. I choke. I am rocked from side to side by the violence of my emotion. I imagine these nameless, these immaculate people, watching me from behind bushes. I leap high to excite their admiration. At night, in bed, I excite their complete wonder. I often die pierced with arrows to win their tears. If they should say, or I should see from a label on their boxes, that they were in Scarborough last holidays, the whole town runs gold, the whole pavement is illuminated. Therefore I hate looking-glasses which show me my real face. Alone, I often fall down into nothingness. I must push my foot stealthily lest I should fall off the edge of the world into nothingness. I have to bang my head against some hard door to call myself back to the body.'“现在你瞧，吉尼多么胸有成竹地穿上长筒袜，只不过是要去打网球。这一点，我很羡慕。但是我更喜欢苏珊的风格，因为她更坚决果断，而且不像吉尼那么爱出风头。她俩都瞧不起我模仿她们的一举一动；但是苏珊有时会教我，比方说，怎么打蝴蝶结，而吉尼自有她的一番见识，却只藏在自己肚里。她们的身边总不乏朋友。她们总有些躲在角落悄悄说的话。而我迷恋的只是名字和面孔；我把它们像祛除灾祸的护身符一样储藏了起来。我选中大厅对面一个陌生的面孔，而当这个我不知道名字的她与我相对而坐时，我简直茶水也喝不下去了。我说不出话来。我被强烈的情感弄得心神不宁。我想象着这些叫不上名字的人，这些完美无瑕的人，正从灌木丛后面注视着我。我要高高跃起，引来他们的赞美。到了晚上，上了床，我要激发出他们全部的好奇心。为了赢得他们的眼泪，我时常要万箭穿心而死。假如他们说，或者我从他们行李箱的标签上看到，他们刚刚在斯卡伯勒度过假，整个小城都金光闪闪，整个步道都灯火通明。因此我讨厌镜子，它们让我看到自己真实的面孔。独自一人时，我常常会堕入虚无的境界。我必须得暗中伸出一只脚，以防自己从世界的边缘跌入虚无的境界。我得把头撞上某扇坚实的门，才能把自己召回到我的肉体。”

'We are late,' said Susan. 'We must wait our turn to play. We will pitch here in the long grass and pretend to watch Jinny and Clara, Betty and Mavis. But we will not watch them. I hate watching other people play games. I will make images of all the things I hate most and bury them in the ground. This shiny pebble is Madame Carlo, and I will bury her deep because of her fawning and ingratiating manners, because of the sixpence she gave me for keeping my knuckles flat when I played my scales. I buried her sixpence. I would bury the whole school: the gymnasium; the classroom; the dining-room that always smells of meat; and the chapel. I would bury the red-brown tiles and the oily portraits of old men—benefactors, founders of schools. There are some trees I like; the cherry tree with lumps of clear gum on the bark; and one view from the attic towards some far hills. Save for these, I would bury it all as I bury these ugly stones that are always scattered about this briny coast, with its piers and its trippers. At home, the waves are mile long. On winter nights we hear them booming. Last Christmas a man was drowned sitting alone in his cart.'“我们迟到了。”苏珊说。“我们必须等轮到我们才能玩。我们要在这边的高草丛中投球，假装看吉尼与克拉拉、贝蒂与梅维斯打球。但是我们不会真正看她们的。我讨厌看别人打球。我要把我最讨厌的东西都变成具体的形象，然后把它们埋在土里。这枚亮晶晶的卵石是卡洛太太，我要把她埋得深深的，因为她那些奉承、巴结的举止，因为她凭我弹音阶时指节没弯而给我的那六便士。我埋了她的六便士。我要埋了整所学校：体育馆、教室、总有一股肉味的饭厅，还有那座教堂。我要埋了那些红褐色的瓷砖和那些老头子们的奉承画像——他们都是学校的资助者和创办者。有些树我是喜欢的；有株樱桃树，它的树皮上有一块块清亮的胶脂；我还喜欢从阁楼望向那片远山的景色。除了这些，我要把一切都埋掉，就像我埋掉这些难看的石子，它们像突堤和游人一样老是散布在这片海岸上。老家那边，海浪有一英里长。冬夜里我们总能听见它们隆隆的轰响。去年圣诞节，有个男人独自坐在马车里被海浪淹没了。”

'When Miss Lambert passes,' said Rhoda, 'talking to the clergyman, the others laugh and imitate her hunch behind her back; yet everything changes and becomes luminous. Jinny leaps higher too when Miss Lambert passes. Suppose she saw that daisy, it would change. Wherever she goes, things are changed under her eyes; and yet when she has gone is not the thing the same again? Miss Lambert is taking the clergyman through the wicket-gate to her private garden; and when she comes to the pond, she sees a frog on a leaf, and that will change. All is solemn, all is pale where she stands, like a statue in a grove. She lets her tasselled silken cloak slip down, and only her purple ring still glows, her vinous, her amethystine ring. There is this mystery about people when they leave us. When they leave us I can companion them to the pond and make them stately. When Miss Lambert passes, she makes the daisy change; and everything runs like streaks of fire when she carves the beef. Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I dream; I dream.'“兰伯特小姐一边走，”罗达说，“一边跟牧师说着话，其他人在她身后一边笑，一边模仿她弯着背的样子；不过每样东西都变了，变得清晰了。兰伯特小姐经过身边时，吉尼也跳得更高了。假如她瞧见了那株雏菊，它也会变的。无论她到哪儿，经她眼的东西都会发生变化；但是当她走过之后，那样东西还不是一样吗？兰伯特小姐正领着牧师经过边门来到她的私人花园；当她来到池塘边，她看见叶子上面的一只青蛙，而这种情景也会发生变化。她像小树林里的一尊雕像，站立之处唯有冷峻，唯有苍白。她任由她那件缀着流苏、丝绸般的披风滑落下来，唯有她那枚紫色的戒指，那葡萄似的紫水晶戒指还在发着幽光。每当人们离开我们时，他们身上总有这样的神秘。每当他们离开我们时，我总能陪伴他们来到池塘边，使他们看上去那么堂而皇之。每当兰伯特小姐走过时，她总会让那株雏菊发生变化；当她切割牛肉时，每样东西都像燃起了熊熊火焰。月复一月，万物都在失去它们的硬度；就连我的肉体现在也仿佛透了光；我的脊柱柔软得像靠近烛火的蜡。我梦想着，梦想着。”

'I have won the game,' said Jinny. 'Now it is your turn. I must throw myself on the ground and pant. I am out of breath with running, with triumph. Everything in my body seems thinned out with running and triumph. My blood must be bright red, whipped up, slapping against my ribs. My soles tingle, as if wire rings opened and shut in my feet. I see every blade of grass very clear. But the pulse drums so in my forehead, behind my eyes, that everything dances—the net, the grass; your faces leap like butterflies; the trees seem to jump up and down. There is nothing staid, nothing settled, in this universe. All is rippling, all is dancing; all is quickness and triumph. Only, when I have lain alone on the hard ground, watching you play your game, I begin to feel the wish to be singled out; to be summoned, to be called away by one person who comes to find me, who is attracted towards me, who cannot keep himself from me, but comes to where I sit on my gilt chair, with my frock billowing round me like a flower. And withdrawing into an alcove, sitting alone on a balcony we talk together.“我赢了这场球。”吉尼说。“现在轮到你了。我得倒在地上喘喘气。不停的奔跑和胜利简直令我喘不过气来。不停的奔跑和胜利令我身体里的一切似乎都散了架。沸腾的血液撞击着我的胸口，肯定变得鲜红。我的脚掌感到刺痛，仿佛有些线圈在我的脚底一开一合。我看见每一片草叶都很清亮。但我脑门里面、眼睛后面的脉搏咚咚咚鼓点似的响，以至于每样东西——球网啊，小草啊——都跟着舞动起来；你们的面孔像翩翩的蝴蝶；那些树也好像蹦蹦跳跳。这个世上，没有什么是固定不变的，没有什么是安安稳稳的。唯有波动，唯有舞蹈；唯有速度和胜利。只是，当我独自躺在硬实的地上瞧着你们打球的时候，我开始感觉自己希望接受选拔，接受召唤，被一个前来寻找我的人叫走，这个人受到我的吸引，他离不开我，只能来到我的身旁，而我坐在我的镀金椅上，裙裾飞扬，像一枝花。我们俩躲进凉亭里，或者坐在无人的阳台上，喁喁而谈。

'Now the tide sinks. Now the trees come to earth; the brisk waves that slap my ribs rock more gently, and my heart rides at anchor, like a sailing-boat whose sails slide slowly down on to the white deck. The game is over. We must go to tea now.'“这会儿潮水落了下去。瞧，树木回到地面上；撞击我胸口的欢快的波浪轻轻地摇啊摇，我的心停泊下来，就像一艘帆船，风帆缓缓地滑落到白色的甲板上。球打完了。现在我们必须去吃茶点。”

'The boasting boys,' said Louis, 'have gone now in a vast team to play cricket. They have driven off in their great brake, singing in chorus. All their heads turn simultaneously at the corner by the laurel bushes. Now they are boasting. Larpent's brother played football for Oxford; Smith's father made a century at Lords. Archie and Hugh; Parker and Dalton; Larpent and Smith; then again Archie and Hugh; Parker and Dalton; Larpent and Smith—the names repeat themselves; the names are the same always. They are the volunteers; they are the cricketers; they are the officers of the Natural History Society. They are always forming into fours and marching in troops with badges on their caps; they salute simultaneously passing the figure of their general. How majestic is their order, how beautiful is their obedience! If I could follow, if I could be with them, I would sacrifice all I know. But they also leave butterflies trembling with their wings pinched off; they throw dirty pocket-handkerchiefs clotted with blood screwed up into corners. They make little boys sob in dark passages. They have big red ears that stand out under their caps. Yet that is what we wish to be, Neville and I. I watch them go with envy. Peeping from behind a curtain, I note the simultaneity of their movements with delight. If my legs were reinforced by theirs, how they would run! If I had been with them and won matches and rowed in great races, and galloped all day, how I should thunder out songs at midnight! In what a torrent the words would rush from my throat!'“那些夸夸其谈的男孩子们，”路易斯说，“这会儿凑了一大帮人打板球去了。他们坐着四轮大马车，一路合唱着开走了。在月桂树丛旁边的拐角处，他们同时转过头去。这会儿他们又在吹牛了。拉本特的哥哥曾为牛津大学足球队效力过；史密斯的父亲曾在洛兹学院板球场打出过一百分。阿奇和休；帕克和多尔顿；拉本特和史密斯；接着还是阿奇和休；帕克和多尔顿；拉本特和史密斯——这些名字重复来重复去；一直都是这些名字。他们是义勇军战士；他们是板球运动员；他们还是自然史学会的官员。他们总是四人一组，帽子上戴着徽章，列队而行；每当经过长官身边，他们都会一起敬礼。他们的口令多么雄壮，他们的服从多么令人钦佩！如果我能追随他们，如果我能成为其中一员，我愿奉献我所知道的一切。但是他们也任由掐掉翅膀的蝴蝶颤抖不止；他们会把凝了血迹的手帕拧成一团丢进墙角。他们会在昏暗的过道里弄哭小孩子。他们通红的大耳朵在帽子下面格外惹眼。但这正是我们，我和内维尔所希望的那个样子。我羡慕地看着他们走远。我从帘子后面偷偷地望出去，满心欢喜地注意到他们的步调那么一致。假如我的双腿因为他们的腿而增强了力量，那会跑得多么快！假如我是他们中的一员，赢得一场场球，参加划船大赛，马儿一样地整天奔跑，那么我在半夜里将会吼出多么高亢的歌声！我的话语也会脱口而出、滔滔不绝！”

'Percival has gone now,' said Neville. 'He is thinking of nothing but the match. He never waved his hand as the brake turned the corner by the laurel bush. He despises me for being too weak to play (yet he is always kind to my weakness). He despises me for not caring if they win or lose except that he cares. He takes my devotion; he accepts my tremulous, no doubt abject offering, mixed with contempt as it is for his mind. For he cannot read. Yet when I read Shakespeare or Catullus, lying in the long grass, he understands more than Louis. Not the words—but what are words? Do I not know already how to rhyme, how to imitate Pope, Dryden, even Shakespeare? But I cannot stand all day in the sun with my eyes on the ball; I cannot feel the flight of the ball through my body and think only of the ball. I shall be a clinger to the outsides of words all my life. Yet I could not live with him and suffer his stupidity. He will coarsen and snore. He will marry and there will be scenes of tenderness at breakfast. But now he is young. Not a thread, not a sheet of paper lies between him and the sun, between him and the rain, between him and the moon as he lies naked, tumbled, hot, on his bed. Now as they drive along the high road in their brake his face is mottled red and yellow. He will throw off his coat and stand with his legs apart, with his hands ready, watching the wicket. And he will pray, "Lord let us win"; he will think of one thing only, that they should win.“这会儿珀西瓦尔已经走远了。”内维尔说。“他只琢磨着球赛的事。大马车转过月桂树丛旁边的拐角时，他从不挥手。他瞧不起我，因为我身体太弱而没法打球（但他倒是一直对我的病弱抱有同情之心）。他鄙视我，因为我不在乎他们是赢是输，而他在乎。他接受我的忠诚；他接受我紧张兮兮、无疑也是低三下四的献礼，其中掺杂了我对他的头脑的蔑视。因为他不能阅读。不过当我躺在高草丛中朗读莎士比亚或卡图卢斯时，他倒是比路易斯懂的多。并非那些词语——但词语算什么？我不是已经懂了怎么押韵，怎么模仿蒲柏、德莱顿、甚至莎士比亚？但我还是不能整天站在太阳下，眼睛盯着球；我还是不能通过身体来感觉球的飞行，一门心思只想着球。我一生都要坚持求索词语的最大量。但是我不可能和他一起生活，容忍他的愚蠢。他会变得粗俗不堪，还会打呼噜。他会结婚成家，早餐桌上也会出现温情脉脉的场面。但是现在他还年轻。当他光着身子躺在床上，辗转反侧、燥热难当时，他与太阳之间，他与雨水之间，他与月亮之间，并不存在丝毫片纸的阻隔。这会儿当他们坐着马车驶上大路时，他的脸庞被染得一块红一块黄。他会甩掉外衣，两腿叉开站在那儿，双手做好准备，防守着球门。他会祈祷：‘主保佑我们得胜’；他会只想一件事，就是他们要赢。

'How could I go with them in a brake to play cricket? Only Bernard could go with them, but Bernard is too late to go with them. He is always too late. He is prevented by his incorrigible moodiness from going with them. He stops, when he washes his hands, to say, "There is a fly in that web. Shall I rescue that fly; shall I let the spider eat it?"He is shaded with innumerable perplexities, or he would go with them to play cricket, and would lie in the grass, watching the sky, and would start when the ball was hit. But they would forgive him; for he would tell them a story.'“我怎么可能和他们一起坐着马车去打板球呢？只有伯纳德能跟他们一起去，但是伯纳德行动太慢，没能跟着他们去。他总是行动太慢。他那无可救药的喜怒无常的情绪总是阻碍他跟他们一起去。洗手的时候他会停下来，说道：‘蛛网里有只苍蝇。我是该解救那只苍蝇，还是该让蜘蛛把它吃掉？’他总是被数不清的麻烦事笼罩着，不然他就能跟他们一起去打板球，就能躺在草地上望着天空，就能在球被击中的时候惊跳起来。但是他们不会怪他，因为他会给他们讲故事。”

'They have bowled off,' said Bernard, 'and I am too late to go with them. The horrid little boys, who are also so beautiful, whom you and Louis, Neville, envy so deeply, have bowled off with their heads all turned the same way. But I am unaware of these profound distinctions. My fingers slip over the keyboard without knowing which is black and which white. Archie makes easily a hundred; I by a fluke make sometimes fifteen. But what is the difference between us? Wait though, Neville; let me talk. The bubbles are rising like the silver bubbles from the floor of a saucepan; image on top of image. I cannot sit down to my book, like Louis, with ferocious tenacity. I must open the little trap-door and let out these linked phrases in which I run together whatever happens, so that instead of incoherence there is perceived a wandering thread, lightly joining one thing to another. I will tell you the story of the doctor.“他们坐上车开走了，”伯纳德说，“我行动太慢，没能跟着一块去。那些讨厌又那么可爱的小男孩们，你和路易斯、内维尔羡慕不已的小男孩们，坐上车开走了，他们的脑袋齐刷刷地转向同一边。但是我却没意识到这是多么大的殊荣。我的手指在键盘上滑动，并不知道哪个是黑键哪个是白键。阿奇轻易地拿100分；我偶尔侥幸地拿到15分。但是我们之间有什么不同？不过等等，内维尔；让我说下去。气泡正在向上冒，就像银色的泡泡从锅底冒上来；意象之上还是意象。我可不能像路易斯那样坐下来，拼了命似的孜孜不倦地读书。我必得打开这道狭小的活动门，放出这些我随机组合成串的语句，这样你们就会意识到有一条恍惚的线索，轻巧地把一件事情与另一件事情串联起来，而不是互不连贯的。我要给你们讲讲那位博士的故事。

'When Dr Crane lurches through the swing-doors after prayers he is convinced, it seems, of his immense superiority; and indeed Neville, we cannot deny that his departure leaves us not only with a sense of relief, but also with a sense of something removed, like a tooth. Now let us follow him as he heaves through the swing-door to his own apartments. Let us imagine him in his private room over the stables undressing. He unfastens his sock suspenders (let us be trivial, let us be intimate). Then with a characteristic gesture (it is difficult to avoid these ready-made phrases, and they are, in his case, somehow appropriate) he takes the silver, he takes the coppers from his trouser pockets and places them there, and there, on his dressing-table. With both arms stretched on the arms of his chair he reflects (this is his private moment; it is here we must try to catch him): shall he cross the pink bridge into his bedroom or shall he not cross it? The two rooms are united by a bridge of rosy light from the lamp at the bedside where Mrs Crane lies with her hair on the pillow reading a French memoir. As she reads, she sweeps her hand with an abandoned and despairing gesture over her forehead, and sighs, "Is this all?" comparing herself with some French duchess.“当克兰博士做完祷告一摇一晃走出弹簧门时，看来他对自己的无上权威深信不疑；但是说实在的，内维尔，他的离去不但让我们松了一口气，而且让我们感觉摆脱了某种负担，好像拔掉了一颗牙似的。这会儿他出了弹簧门直奔自己的寓所而去，让我们跟着他吧。让我们想象他在马厩上面的私室里脱衣服的情景吧。他解开他的吊袜带（让我们不避琐屑，让我们细致入微吧）。接着用一种富有特色的姿势（很难避免这些陈旧的词，何况这些词用在他身上也颇为合适），他从裤袋里掏出银币，又掏出些铜钱，把它们这儿一堆，那儿一堆，在他的梳妆台上分别放好。他摊开两臂搁在椅子扶手上沉思起来（这是他一个人独处的时刻，我们正是要在这里尽量看清他）：他是该穿过粉红桥进到卧室里呢，还是不穿过那桥？这两个房间由粉红色灯光形成的一座桥连结起来，灯光来自床边的台灯，克兰太太躺在那儿，头发披散在枕头上，正就着那盏灯在阅读一本法文回忆录。读着读着，她用一个厌弃而绝望的姿势伸手在额头上方抹了抹，一边叹息道：‘这就是全部吗？’一边拿她自己与某位法国公爵夫人进行比较。

Now, says the doctor, in two years I shall retire. I shall clip yew hedges in a west country garden. An admiral I might have been; or a judge; not a schoolmaster. What forces, he asks, staring at the gas-fire with his shoulders hunched up more hugely than we know them (he is in his shirt-sleeves remember), have brought me to this?

听着，博士说，再过两年我就退休了。我要在西部乡村一个花园里修剪紫杉树篱。我本来可以做个海军上将，或者做个法官，而不是做校长。是什么力量把我引到这方面来的呢？他凝视着煤气炉自问道。他双肩隆起，比我们素常所见更明显（记住，他只穿着衬衫）。

What vast forces? he thinks, getting into the stride of his majestic phrases as he looks over his shoulder at the window. It is a stormy night; the branches of the chestnut trees are ploughing up and down. Stars flash between them.

是什么样的巨大力量呢？他一边思考着，对自己庄严的话语满怀信心，一边回头向窗外望去。这是一个狂风暴雨的夜晚；栗树的枝杈扭来扭去。枝杈之间星斗忽闪。

What vast forces of good and evil have brought me here? he asks, and sees with sorrow that his chair has worn a little hole in the pile of the purple carpet. So there he sits, swinging his braces. But stories that follow people into their private rooms are difficult. I cannot go on with this story. I twiddle a piece of string; I turn over four or five coins in my trouser pocket.'

是什么样的善与恶的巨大力量把我引到这里来的呢？他自问道，而且他悲哀地发现他的椅子已经在紫色地毯的绒毛上磨出了一个小洞。他就这么坐在那儿，晃悠着他的裤子背带。但是跟着人家进入内室这样的故事很难讲。这个故事我没法讲下去了。我捻弄着一根线头；我翻弄着裤袋里的四五枚硬币。”

'Bernard's stories amuse me,' said Neville, 'at the start. But when they tail off absurdly and he gapes, twiddling a bit of string, I feel my own solitude. He sees everyone with blurred edges. Hence I cannot talk to him of Percival. I cannot expose my absurd and violent passion to his sympathetic understanding. It too would make a "story". I need someone whose mind falls like a chopper on a block; to whom the pitch of absurdity is sublime, and a shoe-string adorable. To whom I can expose the urgency of my own passion? Louis is too cold, too universal. There is nobody here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organized to prevent feeling alone. Yet I am struck still as I walk by sudden premonitions of what is to come. Yesterday, passing the open door leading into the private garden, I saw Fenwick with his mallet raised. The steam from the tea-urn rose in the middle of the lawn. There were banks of blue flowers. Then suddenly descended upon me the obscure, the mystic sense of adoration, of completeness that triumphed over chaos. Nobody saw my poised and intent figure as I stood at the open door. Nobody guessed the need I had to offer my being to one god; and perish, and disappear. His mallet descended; the vision broke.“伯纳德的故事让我觉得有趣，”内维尔说，“在一开始的时候。但是当它们荒唐地不了了之，而且他捻弄着一点线头张口结舌的时候，我感受到我自身的寂寞。他看待每个人都是模棱两可的。所以我没法跟他谈论珀西瓦尔。我无法使我荒唐而热烈的情感得到他的同情与理解。那也会编成一个‘故事’的。我需要一个头脑果断、斩钉截铁的人；这个人会把荒唐至极视为崇高，把一根鞋带视同珍宝。我能向谁坦露我内心迫切的激情呢？路易斯过于冷淡，过于一般化。这儿无人可说，这些灰暗的拱门、悲吟的鸽子、欢腾的游戏，以及因循、效仿都那么巧妙地组合起来，阻抑独自感伤。可是走着走着我就会呆若木鸡，因为突然出现了即将到来的事情的一些征兆。昨天，经过通往私人花园的那扇开着的门时，我看见芬威克拿着他的木槌。草坪中央的茶水壶冒出热气。还有一垄一垄蓝色的鲜花。这时我心中突然涌上一种蒙眬而神秘的崇敬感，一种平息一切混乱的完美感。当我站在开着的花园门口时，没有人看见我坦然而专注的神态。没有人猜得到我所怀有的渴望：我愿把我的生命献给某个神，然后死去，然后消失。他的木槌放了下来，幻景破灭了。

'Should I seek out some tree? Should I desert these form rooms and libraries, and the broad yellow page in which I read Catullus, for woods and fields? Should I walk under beech trees, or saunter along the river bank, where the trees meet united like lovers in the water? But nature is too vegetable, too vapid. She has only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. I begin to wish for firelight, privacy, and the limbs of one person.'“我应该寻求某一棵树吗？我应该逃出这些班级课室和图书馆，丢下我在其中读到卡图卢斯的那本发黄的大书，奔向树林和田野吗？我应该走在山毛榉树下，或者沿着河岸漫步，看那些树像恋人似的在水中相遇、交合吗？但是大自然过于单调、过于乏味了。她有的只是崇高与广袤、水和树叶。我开始向往炉火、清静和某个人的肢体。”

'I begin to wish,' said Louis, 'for night to come. As I stand here with my hand on the grained oak panel of Mr Wickham's door I think myself the friend of Richelieu, or the Duke of St Simon holding out a snuff-box to the King himself. It is my privilege. My witticisms "run like wildfire through the court". Duchesses tear emeralds from their earrings out of admiration—but these rockets rise best in darkness, in my cubicle at night. I am now a boy only with a colonial accent holding my knuckles against Mr Wickham's grained oak door. The day has been full of ignominies and triumphs concealed from fear of laughter. I am the best scholar in the school. But when darkness comes I put off this unenviable body—my large nose, my thin lips, my colonial accent—and inhabit space. I am then Virgil's companion, and Plato's. I am then the last scion of one of the great houses of France. But I am also one who will force himself to desert these windy and moonlit territories, these midnight wanderings, and confront grained oak doors. I will achieve in my life—Heaven grant that it be not long—some gigantic amalgamation between the two discrepancies so hideously apparent to me. Out of my suffering I will do it. I will knock. I will enter.'“我开始向往，”路易斯说，“即将到来的夜晚。我站在这儿，一只手抚着威克姆先生门上那块木纹橡木板，此时我想象自己是黎塞留的朋友，或者是圣西蒙的公爵，正把一只鼻烟盒进献给国王本人。这是我的特殊荣幸。我的妙语‘如野火一般传遍宫廷’。公爵夫人们因为叹赏不已而扯下了她们耳环上的绿宝石——不过只有到了晚上，在我的小卧室里，在黑暗中，这些飞升的焰火才会大放异彩。这会儿我只是一个带有殖民地口音的小男孩，正攥紧手指节叩着威克姆先生的木纹橡木房门。这一天充满了因怕受到嘲笑而隐藏起来的种种屈辱和得意。我是这所学校最好的学生。但是当黑夜到来时，我就丢开了这具不值得羡慕的躯体——我的大鼻子，我的薄嘴唇，我的殖民地口音——而栖居于自由的天地。这时我与维吉尔为伴，与柏拉图为伴。这时我是法兰西名门望族之一的末代苗裔。但是我也会强迫自己抛开月光下那些虚无缥缈的领地，抛开午夜里那些神思恍惚的漫游，面对这些木纹橡木房门。今生我要实现——愿上天垂怜，这一天不会太远——这两种矛盾之间的伟大融合，它们是那么狰狞可怕地出现在我面前。为了我的苦难，我要这样去做。我要敲门。我要进去。”

'I have torn off the whole of May and June,' said Susan, 'and twenty days of July. I have torn them off and screwed them up so that they no longer exist, save as a weight in my side. They have been crippled days, like moths with shrivelled wings unable to fly. There are only eight days left. In eight days' time I shall get out of the train and stand on the platform at six twenty five. Then my freedom will unfurl, and all these restrictions that wrinkle and shrivel—hours and order and discipline, and being here and there exactly at the right moment—will crack asunder. Out the day will spring, as I open the carriage-door and see my father in his old hat and gaiters. I shall tremble. I shall burst into tears. Then next morning I shall get up at dawn. I shall let myself out by the kitchen door. I shall walk on the moor. The great horses of the phantom riders will thunder behind me and stop suddenly. I shall see the swallow skim the grass. I shall throw myself on a bank by the river and watch the fish slip in and out among the reeds. The palms of my hands will be printed with pine-needles. I shall there unfold and take out whatever it is I have made here; something hard. For something has grown in me here, through the winters and summers, on staircases, in bedrooms. I do not want, as Jinny wants, to be admired. I do not want people, when I come in, to look up with admiration. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.“我已经撕下了整个的五月、六月，”苏珊说，“和七月的20天。我撕下它们，把它们拧成团，它们就不再存在了，成了对我有利的一个砝码。它们是一些残缺不全的日子，像翅膀干瘪而无法飞舞的蛾子。只剩下八天了。八天之后，六点二十五分，我就要走下火车，站在月台上。那时我的自由将展翅翱翔，所有这些皱缩而干瘪的约束——钟点啦，秩序啦，纪律啦，以及准时到这儿到那儿等等——都将土崩瓦解。那一天会突然来临，我打开马车门，看见我的父亲戴着他那顶旧帽子，打着绑腿。我会发抖。我会突然放声大哭。然后第二天早上，我会天不亮就起床。我会顺着厨房门一个人来到外边。我会到荒地上散散步。幽灵骑士们的高头大马会在我身后呼啸而来，然后突然停住。我会看见燕子掠过草地。我会纵身扑倒在河岸上，瞧着那些鱼儿在芦苇间忽隐忽现。我的手掌会留下松针的印迹。我会在那儿敞开心扉，抖落掉我在这里获得的东西，令人难受的东西。因为在这儿，在冬夏的时令中，在楼梯上，在卧室里，我的心中已经长出了某种东西。我不想，像吉尼那样，想受人赞美。我不想，在我进门的时候，人家用仰慕的眼光看着我。我想付出，我想收获，我想在与世隔绝的宁静中敞开我的所有。

'Then I shall come back through the trembling lanes under the arches of the nut leaves. I shall pass an old woman wheeling a perambulator full of sticks; and the shepherd. But we shall not speak. I shall come back through the kitchen garden, and see the curved leaves of the cabbages pebbled with dew, and the house in the garden, blind with curtained windows. I shall go upstairs to my room, and turn over my own things, locked carefully in the wardrobe: my shells; my eggs; my curious grasses. I shall feed my doves and my squirrel. I shall go to the kennel and comb my spaniel. So gradually I shall turn over the hard thing that has grown here in my side. But here bells ring; feet shuffle perpetually.'“然后我会顺着核桃树下令人颤栗的小路走回来。我会遇见一位老太太，正推着一辆装满柴禾的婴儿车，还有那位牧羊人。但是我们不会交谈。我会穿过家庭菜园走回来，我会看见沾着露珠的卷心菜那翻卷的菜叶，还有花园里那幢严严实实地遮着窗帘的房子。我会上楼来到我的房间，翻动那些被我小心地锁在衣柜里的东西：我的贝壳，我的鸟蛋，我的奇花异草。我会喂一喂我的鸽子和我的松鼠。我会到狗窝那儿，为我的长毛垂耳犬梳一梳毛。这样渐渐地，我会把在这儿我心里长出的那种令人难受的东西翻转过去。但是在这儿，铃声总是响起；脚步始终沉重。”

'I hate darkness and sleep and night,' said Jinny, 'and lie longing for the day to come. I long that the week should be all one day without divisions. When I wake early—and the birds wake me—I lie and watch the brass handles on the cupboard grow clear; then the basin; then the towel-horse. As each thing in the bedroom grows clear, my heart beats quicker. I feel my body harden, and become pink, yellow, brown. My hands pass over my legs and body. I feel its slopes, its thinness. I love to hear the gong roar through the house and the stir begin—here a thud, there a patter. Doors slam; water rushes. Here is another day, here is another day, I cry, as my feet touch the floor. It may be a bruised day, an imperfect day. I am often scolded. I am often in disgrace for idleness, for laughing; but even as Miss Matthews grumbles at my feather-headed carelessness, I catch sight of something moving—a speck of sun perhaps on a picture, or the donkey drawing the mowing-machine across the lawn; or a sail that passes between the laurel leaves, so that I am never cast down. I cannot be prevented from pirouetting behind Miss Matthews into prayers.“我讨厌黑暗、睡觉和晚上，”吉尼说，“躺在床上盼着白天来临。我盼着一个星期会像整个一个白天那样没有间隔。当我早早醒来时，——鸟儿会叫醒我——我会躺在床上，望着橱柜上的黄铜把手逐渐变得清晰；接着是脸盆；接着是毛巾架。随着卧室里的每一样东西渐渐变得清晰，我的心跳也加速了。我感觉我的身体硬实起来，开始显出粉红色、黄色、棕色。我的手拂过我的腿和身体。我感觉到身体的起伏和纤瘦。我喜欢听见房子里锣的喧响和继之而来的骚动——这里砰的一声，那里啪的一声。房门开开阖阖；水流哗哗作响。又一天来临了，又一天来临了，我的脚一落地便大喊大叫道。可能这会是伤心的一天，不如意的一天。我经常受到责骂。我经常很不讨人喜欢，因为我懒懒散散，而且爱发笑；不过即使在马修斯小姐嘟囔我轻浮而散漫时，我也会一眼望见有什么东西在动——可能是画上的一抹阳光，或者是草坪上拉着除草机的那头驴，或者是月桂树叶间闪过的一片风帆；所以我从来不会垂头丧气。什么也阻挡不了我一边跟着马修斯小姐去做祷告，一边在她身后跳着足尖舞。

'Now, too, the time is coming when we shall leave school and wear long skirts. I shall wear necklaces and a white dress without sleeves at night. There will be parties in brilliant rooms; and one man will single me out and will tell me what he has told no other person. He will like me better than Susan or Rhoda. He will find in me some quality, some peculiar thing. But I shall not let myself be attached to one person only. I do not want to be fixed, to be pinioned. I tremble, I quiver, like the leaf in the hedge, as I sit dangling my feet, on the edge of the bed, with a new day to break open. I have fifty years, I have sixty years to spend. I have not yet broken into my hoard. This is the beginning.'“再说，也快要到我们离开学校、穿上长裙的时候了。到了晚上，我要戴上项链，穿上一件无袖白礼服。金碧辉煌的房间里将要举办舞会。某位男士将会单独约我出去，对我讲他从未对别人讲过的事。与苏珊或罗达相比，他会更喜欢我。他会在我身上发现某种品质，某种特别的东西。但是我不会让我自己只迷恋一个人。我不想被钉住，被缠上。伴着新的一天来临，我垂着脚坐在床沿上，我发抖，我微微颤动着，像树篱上的那片叶子。我还有50年，我还有60年要过。我还不曾打开我的宝藏。这只是刚刚开始。”

'There are hours and hours,' said Rhoda, 'before I can put out the light and lie suspended on my bed above the world, before I can let the day drop down, before I can let my tree grow, quivering in green pavilions above my head. Here I cannot let it grow. Somebody knocks through it. They ask questions, they interrupt, they throw it down.“还要好几个钟头之后，”罗达说，“我才能熄灯躺在床上，遨游世界之外；我才能让这一天落幕；我才能让我的树成长壮大，在我头上的绿亭子里微微摇曳。在这儿，我没法让它生长。有人总要把它随手拔掉。他们问这问那，他们不断打岔，他们随手就把它丢掉。

'Now I will go to the bathroom and take off my shoes and wash; but as I wash, as I bend my head down over the basin, I will let the Russian Empress's veil flow about my shoulders. The diamonds of the Imperial crown blaze on my forehead. I hear the roar of the hostile mob as I step out on to the balcony. Now I dry my hands, vigorously, so that Miss, whose name I forget, cannot suspect that I am waving my fist at an infuriated mob. "I am your Empress, people."My attitude is one of defiance. I am fearless. I conquer.“现在我要去浴室，脱掉鞋子，准备洗澡；不过当我洗澡的时候，当我在洗脸盆上面俯下头的时候，我要让俄罗斯女皇的面纱流泻在我的肩上。皇冠上的钻石在我额头闪耀。当我移步阳台上，我听见凶恶的暴徒们的怒吼。现在我揩干我的手，动作有力，这样那位我忘了她名字的女士丝毫不会怀疑我正在向一伙愤怒的暴徒挥舞我的拳头。‘臣民们，我是你们的女皇。’我抱着一种藐视的态度。我无所畏惧。我征服一切。

'But this is a thin dream. This is a papery tree. Miss Lambert blows it down. Even the sight of her vanishing down the corridor blows it to atoms. It is not solid; it gives me no satisfaction—this Empress dream. It leaves me, now that it has fallen, here in the passage rather shivering. Things seem paler. I will go now into the library and take out some book, and read and look; and read again and look. Here is a poem about a hedge. I will wander down it and pick flowers, green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, wild roses and ivy serpentine. I will clasp them in my hands and lay them on the desk's shiny surface. I will sit by the river's trembling edge and look at the water-lilies, broad and bright, which lit the oak that overhung the hedge with moonlight beams of their own watery light. I will pick flowers; I will bind flowers in one garland and clasp them and present them—Oh! to whom? There is some check in the flow of my being; a deep stream presses on some obstacle; it jerks; it tugs; some knot in the centre resists. Oh, this is pain, this is anguish! I faint, I fail. Now my body thaws; I am unsealed, I am incandescent. Now the stream pours in a deep tide fertilizing, opening the shut, forcing the tight-folded, flooding free. To whom shall I give all that now flows through me, from my warm, my porous body? I will gather my flowers and present them—Oh! to whom?“但这是一个空泛的梦。这是一棵如纸一般的树。兰伯特小姐一吹就倒。甚至她在走廊一闪而过的身影也会使它立时化为齑粉。它是靠不住的；它根本不会给我满足——这样的女皇梦。它既已破灭，就撇下我在这样的过道上瑟瑟发抖。一切似乎愈发苍白。现在我要到图书馆去，拿一本书出来，读一读，翻一翻；重新读一读，翻一翻。这儿有一首关于树篱的诗。我要沿着它信步走去，采摘鲜花和绿色的泻根，还有月色蒙眬的春光、野玫瑰和蜿蜒的常青藤。我要把它们紧紧地握在手中，然后放在明亮的桌面上。我要坐在颤悠悠的河岸边，望着舒展、艳丽的睡莲，它们淡淡的光辉像月光一样照亮了覆垂在树篱上的那棵橡树。我要采摘鲜花；我要把花儿编成一个花环，紧紧地握着它们，把它们献给——唉！献给谁呢？我的生命之流骤然停滞；一条深深的溪流遭遇了障碍；它推搡着，拉扯着；当中的某个结还在负隅顽抗。唉，这正是痛苦所在，这正是烦恼所在！我昏厥过去，我倒了下来。接着我的身体开始溶解；我开始解封，开始光芒四射。现在那条溪流一泻如潮，勇往直前，冲开闸门，突破重围，汹涌无阻。我该把此时从我温暖、疏松的身体中流出的那些东西都献给谁呢？我要采摘我的花儿，把它们献给——唉！献给谁呢？

'Sailors loiter on the parade, and amorous couples; the omnibuses rattle along the sea front to the town. I will give; I will enrich; I will return to the world this beauty. I will bind my flowers in one garland and advancing with my hand outstretched will present them—Oh! to whom?'“水手们成群结队地闲逛，还有那些情侣们；公共马车沿着海滨吱吱嘎嘎驶向城里。我要奉献；我要充实；我要把这份美好归还给世界。我要把我的花儿编成一个花环，然后跑上前，伸过手去，把它们献给——唉！献给谁呢？”

'Now we have received,' said Louis, 'for this is the last day of the last term—Neville's and Bernard's and my last day—whatever our masters have had to give us. The introduction has been made; the world presented. They stay, we depart. The great Doctor, whom of all men I most revere, swaying a little from side to side among the tables, the bound volumes, has dealt out Horace, Tennyson, the complete works of Keats and Matthew Arnold, suitably inscribed. I respect the hand which gave them. He speaks with complete conviction. To him his words are true, though not to us. Speaking in the gruff voice of deep emotion, fiercely, tenderly, he has told us that we are about to go. He has bid us "quit ourselves like men". (On his lips quotations from the Bible, from The Times, seem equally magnificent.) Some will do this; others that. Some will not meet again. Neville, Bernard and I shall not meet here again. Life will divide us. But we have formed certain ties. Our boyish, our irresponsible years are over. But we have forged certain links. Above all, we have inherited traditions. These stone flags have been worn for six hundred years. On these walls are inscribed the names of men of war, of statesmen, of some unhappy poets (mine shall be among them). Blessings be on all traditions, on all safeguards and circumscriptions! I am most grateful to you men in black gowns, and you, dead, for your leading, for your guardianship; yet after all, the problem remains. The differences are not yet solved. Flowers toss their heads outside the window. I see wild birds, and impulses wilder than the wildest birds strike from my wild heart. My eyes are wild; my lips tight pressed. The bird flies; the flower dances; but I hear always the sullen thud of the waves; and the chained beast stamps on the beach. It stamps and stamps.'“我们现在都已接受了，”路易斯说，“因为这是最后一个学期的最后一天——内维尔、伯纳德和我的最后一天——不管我们的老师曾经教给我们什么。我们已经得到引荐；世界已经呈现在眼前。他们还要留下来，我们就要离开了。那位了不起的博士，所有人当中我最尊敬的一位，步履略微蹒跚地穿过课桌之间，把装订好的镌刻了适当题辞的贺拉斯、丁尼生的诗集和济慈、马修·阿诺德的全集发给我们。我尊敬授人书卷的那只手。他的发言充满信念。他认为自己的话语真实可信，即便我们并不信服。他粗声粗气，饱含深情，既严厉又温柔地告诉我们说，我们即将离去。他嘱咐我们‘像男子汉一样离去’。（无论《圣经》上的话，还是《泰晤士报》上的话，从他嘴里说出来都同样铿锵有力。）有些人要做这一行；有些人要干那一行。有些人再也不会相见。内维尔、伯纳德和我再也不会在这里相见。生活将使我们各奔东西。可是我们已经结下了不解之缘。我们幼稚而无忧虑的年代结束了。可是我们已经结成了牢固不破的纽带。最重要的是，我们继承了传统。这些石板路历经六百年沧桑。这里的墙上镌刻着一些军人、政治家，还有一些不幸的诗人的名字（我的名字也将赫然其中）。愿上帝保佑所有的传统、所有的卫士和铭文！我十分感激你们这些身着黑袍的人，你们这些亡故的人，感激你们的引导，感激你们的守护；不过归根结底，问题依然存在。那些分歧还是悬而未决。窗外的花儿频频甩头。我望见那些野鸟，而比最野的鸟还要更野的冲动情绪从我狂野的心中突然冒了出来。我的目光充满野性；我的嘴唇紧紧地绷着。鸟儿飞翔；花儿舞蹈；但我总是听到海浪那沉闷的轰响；那头被链子锁住的野兽在海滩上不停地跺脚。它跺啊，跺啊。”

'This is the final ceremony,' said Bernard. 'This is the last of all our ceremonies. We are overcome by strange feelings. The guard holding his flag is about to blow his whistle; the train breathing steam in another moment is about to start. One wants to say something, to feel something, absolutely appropriate to the occasion. One's mind is primed; one's lips are pursed. And then a bee drifts in and hums round the flowers in the bouquet which Lady Hampton, the wife of the General, keeps smelling to show her appreciation of the compliment. If the bee were to sting her nose? We are all deeply moved; yet irreverent; yet penitent; yet anxious to get it over; yet reluctant to part. The bee distracts us; its casual flight seems to deride our intensity. Humming vaguely, skimming widely, it is settled now on the carnation. Many of us will not meet again. We shall not enjoy certain pleasures again, when we are free to go to bed, or to sit up, when I need no longer smuggle in bits of candle-ends and immoral literature. The bee now hums round the head of the great Doctor. Larpent, John, Archie, Percival, Baker and Smith—I have liked them enormously. I have known one mad boy only. I have hated one mean boy only. I enjoy in retrospect my terribly awkward breakfasts at the Headmaster's table with toast and marmalade. He alone does not notice the bee. If it were to settle on his nose he would flick it off with one magnificent gesture. Now he has made his joke; now his voice has almost broken but not quite. Now we are dismissed—Louis, Neville and I for ever. We take our highly polished books, scholastically inscribed in a little crabbed hand. We rise, we disperse; the pressure is removed. The bee has become an insignificant, a disregarded insect, flown through the open window into obscurity. Tomorrow we go.'“这是最后的仪式。”伯纳德说。“这是我们参加的所有仪式中的最后一次。我们被奇异的情感所笼罩。举旗的警卫即将吹响哨子；又一次喷吐蒸气的火车即将开动。你想说几句完全应景的话，体味一下其中的感受。你的心思蓄势待发；你的嘴唇伺机而动。这时一只蜜蜂飘然而入，绕着花束中的花朵嗡嗡叫，就是汉普顿夫人，那位将军的太太，为了表示她对这番好意的感谢一直在闻的那束花。要是蜜蜂叮了她的鼻子怎么办？我们都深受感动；但感动之余既有不敬；却又后悔；既急于了结；却又依依不舍。蜜蜂让我们分了神。它随意地飞来飞去，似乎在嘲笑我们激动的心情。它嗡嗡的叫声忽强忽弱，轻轻掠过的身影忽东忽西，现在它落到那支康乃馨上面。我们很多人再也不会相见。当我们可以随意上床或者熬夜，当我不再需要私藏一截截蜡头和那些黄书，我们再也享受不到某些乐趣了。这时蜜蜂又绕着那位了不起的博士的脑袋嗡嗡叫开了。拉本特、约翰、阿奇、珀西瓦尔、贝克，还有史密斯——我曾十分喜欢他们。我只结识过一位疯疯癫癫的男孩子。我只讨厌过一位小里小气的男孩子。回想起与校长共进的那些十分别扭的早餐，有面包和果子酱的早餐，也让我感到快乐。唯有他没注意到那只蜜蜂。即使它停在他的鼻子上，他也会气派十足地挥手弹掉它。现在他的玩笑开完了；现在他的说话声几乎变了，但变化不大。现在我们被打发了——路易斯、内维尔，还有我，永远地被打发走了。我们拿着极其精美的手册，上面很有学问地题写了细小难辨的字。我们起身，我们解散；紧张情绪随即解除。那只蜜蜂成了无足轻重、无人理睬的一只昆虫，它从开着的窗飞了出去，不知飞到哪里去了。明天，我们也要飞走。”

'We are about to part,' said Neville. 'Here are the boxes; here are the cabs. There is Percival in his billycock hat. He will forget me. He will leave my letters lying about among guns and dogs unanswered. I shall send him poems and he will perhaps reply with a picture post card. But it is for that that I love him. I shall propose meeting—under a clock, by some Cross; and shall wait, and he will not come. It is for that that I love him. Oblivious, almost entirely ignorant, he will pass from my life. And I shall pass, incredible as it seems, into other lives; this is only an escapade perhaps, a prelude only. I feel already, though I cannot endure the Doctor's pompous mummery and faked emotions, that things we have only dimly perceived draw near. I shall be free to enter the garden where Fenwick raises his mallet. Those who have despised me shall acknowledge my sovereignty. But by some inscrutable law of my being sovereignty and the possession of power will not be enough; I shall always push through curtains to privacy, and want some whispered words alone. Therefore I go, dubious, but elate; apprehensive of intolerable pain; yet I think bound in my adventuring to conquer after huge suffering, bound, surely, to discover my desire in the end. There, for the last time, I see the statue of our pious founder with the doves about his head. They will wheel for ever about his head, whitening it, while the organ moans in the chapel. So I take my seat; and, when I have found my place in the comer of our reserved compartment, I will shade my eyes with a book to hide one tear; I will shade my eyes to observe; to peep at one face. It is the first day of the summer holidays.'“我们即将分别。”内维尔说。“行李箱在这儿了；出租马车也到了。那边的珀西瓦尔戴着他的低圆顶软毡帽。他会忘了我。他会把我的信像鸟枪和猎狗一样四下乱丢，不予回复。我会寄诗给他，他也许会回复我一张带画的明信片。不过我就爱他这一点。我会提出见面——在一只挂钟下面，或在某个十字架旁边；我会一直等他，而他却不会来。我就爱他这一点。这样一个没心没肺、几乎一无所知的人，他会慢慢走出我的生活。而我会走进别人的生活，尽管好像不可思议；也许这只是一种儿戏，只是一段序曲。我已经感觉到——尽管我受不了博士那夸张的表演和做作的情感——我们曾经只是隐约意识到的那些事情越来越近了。我将自由地进入芬威克举起木槌的那座花园。那些鄙视过我的人将会承认我的独立自主。但是根据我生命中某种不可思议的法则，独立自主和拥有权力还不够；我要穿透层层帷幕，一直逼向隐秘之地，我想独自听到一些窃窃私语。因此我要出发，半信半疑，却兴高采烈；我担心会有难以忍受的痛苦；但是又想，我在历险途中遭遇巨大磨难之后必定会战胜一切，毫无疑问，最终我必定会找到自己的目标。最后一次朝那边望去，我看见我们那位虔诚的建校者的雕像，鸽子正在他头顶上空盘旋。它们将永远地盘旋在他的头上，伴着小教堂里风琴的呜咽声，染白他的头发。好了，我要就座了；等我在我们预订的车厢一角找到我的座位时，我要用书遮住我的眼睛，藏起一滴泪珠；我要遮住我的眼睛，为了观察；为了窥视一张脸。这是暑假的第一天。”

'It is the first day of the summer holidays,' said Susan. 'But the day is still rolled up. I will not examine it until I step out on to the platform in the evening. I will not let myself even smell it until I smell the cold green air off the fields. But already these are not school fields; these are not school hedges; the men in these fields are doing real things; they fill carts with real hay; and those are real cows, not school cows. But the carbolic smell of corridors and the chalky smell of schoolrooms is still in my nostrils. The glazed, shiny look of matchboard is still in my eyes. I must wait for fields and hedges, and woods and fields, and steep railway cuttings, sprinkled with gorse bushes, and trucks in sidings, and tunnels and suburban gardens with women hanging out washing, and then fields again and children swinging on gates, to cover it over, to bury it deep, this school that I have hated.“这是暑假的第一天。”苏珊说。“但这一天依然是卷起来的。直到傍晚我踏上月台时，我才会查看它。在我闻到来自田野的、凉凉的绿色气息之前，我甚至不会让自己闻一闻它。但这些已经不是学校的操场；这些不是学校的树篱；田野里的人们正在干真正的活；他们把真正的干草装满推车；那些是真正的母牛，不是学校的母牛。但我的鼻孔里依然闻到的是学校走廊的碳味和教室的粉笔味。我的眼前依然是光亮、耀眼的企口板。我必须等着田野和树篱，树林和田野，点缀着一簇簇荆豆丛的陡峭的铁轨路堑，侧轨上的一辆辆货车，隧道，女人们晾晒衣物的郊区花园，继之而来的田野，大门上荡来荡去的孩子，等着这一切来把它覆盖，把它深深地埋葬，我曾讨厌透顶的这所学校。

'I will not send my children to school nor spend a night all my life in London. Here in this vast station everything echoes and booms hollowly. The light is like the yellow light under an awning. Jinny lives here. Jinny takes her dog for walks on these pavements. People here shoot through the streets silently. They look at nothing but shop-windows. Their heads bob up and down all at about the same height. The streets are laced together with telegraph wires. The houses are all glass, all festoons and glitter; now all front doors and lace curtains, all pillars and white steps. But now I pass on, out of London again; the fields begin again; and the houses, and women hanging washing, and trees and fields. London is now veiled, now vanished, now crumbled, now fallen. The carbolic and the pitch-pine begin to lose their savour. I smell corn and turnips. I undo a paper packet tied with a piece of white cotton. The egg shells slide into the cleft between my knees. Now we stop at station after station, rolling out milk cans. Now women kiss each other and help with baskets. Now I will let myself lean out of the window. The air rushes down my nose and throat—the cold air, the salt air with the smell of turnip fields in it. And there is my father, with his back turned, talking to a farmer. I tremble, I cry. There is my father in gaiters. There is my father.'“我不想把我的孩子们送去上学，也一辈子不想在伦敦过夜。在这个庞大的火车站里，一切都在空洞地轰鸣、回响。昏黄的灯光像上面遮了篷布。吉尼住在这里。吉尼牵着她的狗在这些人行道上散步。这儿的人们默无声息地急匆匆穿过大街。他们的目光只盯着橱窗。他们的脑袋忽上忽下，都保持在差不多一样的高度。电报线把一条条大街缠在一起。房子全都是玻璃的，全都彩花装饰，光辉闪耀；这会儿只看到前门和蕾丝窗帘，全都是柱子和白色的台阶。不过这会儿我又继续向前，出了伦敦；又出现了田野；又看见了房子和晾晒衣物的女人，接着是树和田野。这会儿伦敦蒙上了面纱，一会儿突然消失了，一会儿支离破碎了，一会儿完全看不见了。碳和油松的气味开始散去。我闻到谷物和芜菁的气味。我解开用一根白棉线系的纸袋。蛋壳顺着我两膝之间的缝隙滑了下去。经过一站又一站，喝下了一罐又一罐牛奶，现在我们停了下来。现在女人们相互亲吻着，相互帮扶着提筐携篮。现在我要让自己探出窗外。一股气息直冲我的鼻子和喉咙——凉凉的气息，咸咸的气息，夹杂着芜菁田地的气味。那儿就是我的父亲， 他背过身去，正跟一位农民说话。我颤抖，我哭泣。那儿就是打着绑腿的我父亲。那儿就是我父亲。”

'I sit snug in my own corner going North,' said Jinny, 'in this roaring express which is yet so smooth that it flattens hedges, lengthens hills. We flash past signal-boxes; we make the earth rock slightly from side to side. The distance closes for ever in a point; and we for ever open the distance wide again. The telegraph poles bob up incessantly; one is felled, another rises. Now we roar and swing into a tunnel. The gentleman pulls up the window. I see reflections on the shining glass which lines the tunnel. I see him lower his paper. He smiles at my reflection in the tunnel. My body instantly of its own accord puts forth a frill under his gaze. My body lives a life of its own. Now the black window glass is green again. We are out of the tunnel. He reads his paper. But we have exchanged the approval of our bodies. There is then a great society of bodies, and mine is introduced; mine has come into the room where the gilt chairs are. Look—all the windows of the villas and their white-tented curtains dance; and the men sitting in the hedges in the cornfields with knotted blue handkerchiefs are aware too, as I am aware, of heat and rapture. One waves as we pass him. There are bowers and arbours in these villa gardens and young men in shirt-sleeves on ladders trimming roses. A man on a horse canters over the field. His horse plunges as we pass. And the rider turns to look at us. We roar again through blackness. And I lie back; I give myself up to rapture; I think that at the end of the tunnel I enter a lamp-lit room with chairs, into one of which I sink, much admired, my dress billowing round me. But behold, looking up, I meet the eyes of a sour woman, who suspects me of rapture. My body shuts in her face, impertinently, like a parasol. I open my body, I shut my body at my will. Life is beginning. I now break into my hoard of life.'“我舒服地坐在自己的角落里，一路向北驶去，”吉尼说，“这隆隆的快车却又那么平稳，它让树篱变得扁扁的，让山丘变得长长的。我们从信号楼旁一闪而过；我们让大地微微地左右摇晃。远方在某一点上永远地闭合了；而我们又永远地打开了辽阔的远方。电报线杆不断地跃然眼前；一根倒了下去，另一根又升了上来。现在我们轰轰隆隆、摇摇晃晃地驶入一条隧道。有位先生拉开窗。我看见嵌在隧道壁上的明镜中的影像。我看见他放下报纸。他冲着隧道中照出的我的影子笑了笑。在他的注视下，我的身体立刻自觉地摆出一幅架势。我的身体有它自己的生活。现在黑色的窗玻璃又变成了绿色。我们出了隧道。他在读报纸。不过我们已经交换了对彼此身体的认同。接下来会有一个良好的身体交流，而我的身体已经做了介绍；它走进了一个摆满镀金椅子的房间。瞧——别墅所有的窗和白纱帐似的窗帘都跳起舞来；坐在麦田里的树篱中，戴着打了花结的蓝手帕的那些人，也像我一样，感到激动和欣喜。我们经过的时候，有一个人挥了挥手。这些别墅花园里有凉棚和藤架，还有身着衬衫的年轻人踩着梯子修剪玫瑰。一个人骑在马上慢慢跑过田野。我们经过的时候，他的马突然向前一蹿。骑马的人扭头瞧了瞧我们。我们又轰隆隆地驶入一片黑暗。我仰躺下来；我沉湎于欣喜之中；我设想在隧道的尽头，我走进一个灯火通明、摆满椅子的房间，我在众人仰慕之下坐进一把椅子里，我的衣裙起伏飘扬。可是看啊，一抬头，我碰上了一个尖酸刻薄女人的目光，她竟然怀疑我的欣喜。我的身体当着她的面合拢了，毫不客气，像一把太阳伞。我打开我的身体，我合拢我的身体，随心所欲。生活开始了。这一刻我突然闯入了我人生的宝库。”

'It is the first day of the summer holidays,' said Rhoda. 'And now, as the train passes by these red rocks, by this blue sea, the term, done with, forms itself into one shape behind me. I see its colour. June was white. I see the fields white with daisies, and white with dresses; and tennis courts marked with white. Then there was wind and violent thunder. There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star, "Consume me."That was at midsummer, after the garden party and my humiliation at the garden party. Wind and storm coloured July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when, holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather, I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed.“这是暑假的第一天。”罗达说。“此刻，当火车经过这些火红的岩石，经过这片蔚蓝的海，过去的这个学期也随之成形。我看见它的色彩。六月是白色的。我看见田野里白色的雏菊和白色的衣衫；网球场上也划了白色的标线。接着刮起了风，响起剧烈的雷声。一天晚上，有一颗星星划破云层，我对那颗星星说：‘把我化为灰烬吧。’那时正值仲夏，游园会刚刚过去，我刚刚经历了游园会上的屈辱。大风和暴雨给七月染上了色彩。而且，在院子中间，颜色死灰、令人生厌地横着晦暗的水坑，这时的我一手拿着信封来送信。我来到水坑前。我没能过去。我的脸面丢尽了。我们真是没用，我说着，就倒了。我像一支羽毛被风吹着，沿着隧道飘啊飘。后来，我十分小心地跨出一只脚。一只手扶着一堵砖墙。回来时，我收回心神，相当吃力地跨过那个晦暗的、死灰色的水坑。这就是当时我注定要过的生活。

'So I detach the summer term. With intermittent shocks, sudden as the springs of a tiger, life emerges heaving its dark crest from the sea. It is to this we are attached; it is to this we are bound, as bodies to wild horses. And yet we have invented devices for filling up the crevices and disguising these fissures. Here is the ticket collector. Here are two men; three women; there is a cat in a basket; myself with my elbow on the window-sill—this is here and now. We draw on, we make off, through whispering fields of golden corn. Women in the fields are surprised to be left behind there, hoeing. The train now stamps heavily, breathes stertorously, as it climbs up and up. At last we are on the top of the moor. Only a few wild sheep live here; a few shaggy ponies; yet we are provided with every comfort; with tables to hold our newspapers, with rings to hold our tumblers. We come carrying these appliances with us over the top of the moor. Now we are on the summit. Silence will close behind us. If I look back over that bald head, I can see silence already closing and the shadows of clouds chasing each other over the empty moor; silence closes over our transient passage. This I say is the present moment; this is the first day of the summer holidays. This is part of the emerging monster to whom we are attached.'“我就这样脱离了那个暑期。伴着时断时续的震荡，像老虎的腾跃那般突然，生活从海上掀起了幽暗的浪头，露出了它的面目。就这样我们成为附庸；就这样我们被缚住手脚，好像身体受制的野马。而为了填补缝隙和掩盖这些裂纹，我们发明了各种工具。查票员来了。这儿是两个男人；三个女人；那儿的篮子里有一只猫；我孤身一人，胳膊肘支在窗台上——此刻的情景就是这样。我们渐渐靠近，我们匆匆离去，穿过窃窃私语的金黄麦田。田里的妇女们被甩在身后，惊奇之余继续锄草。这会儿火车仿佛使劲跺着脚，呼吸好像打呼噜似的，它越爬越高了。最后我们来到荒野之巅。这儿只生活着几只野羊；几只粗毛小马；而我们的设备一应俱全；有桌子来放报纸，有套环来放玻璃酒杯。我们随身带着这些设备来到这荒原之巅。此刻我们来到峰顶。寂静将从我们身后包围过来。假如我越过那颗秃脑袋向后望去，我就能看见寂静已经包围过来，云影在空荡的荒原上面你追我赶；我们瞬息路过，寂静随即包围过来。这就是我所说的此时此刻；这就是暑假的第一天。这就是我们无法摆脱的逐渐成形的那只怪兽的一部分。”

'Now we are off,' said Louis. 'Now I hang suspended without attachments. We are nowhere. We are passing through England in a train. England slips by the window, always changing from hill to wood, from rivers and willows to towns again. And I have no firm ground to which I go. Bernard and Neville, Percival, Archie, Larpent and Baker go to Oxford or Cambridge, to Edinburgh, Rome, Paris, Berlin, or to some American University. I go vaguely, to make money vaguely. Therefore a poignant shadow, a keen accent, falls on these golden bristles, on these poppy-red fields, this flowing corn that never overflows its boundaries; but runs rippling to the edge. This is the first day of a new life, another spoke of the rising wheel. But my body passes vagrant as a bird's shadow. I should be transient as the shadow on the meadow, soon fading, soon darkening and dying there where it meets the wood, were it not that I coerce my brain to form in my forehead; I force myself to state, if only in one line of unwritten poetry, this moment; to mark this inch in the long, long history that began in Egypt, in the time of the Pharaohs, when women carried red pitchers to the Nile. I seem already to have lived many thousand years. But if I now shut my eyes, if I fail to realize the meeting-place of past and present, that I sit in a third-class railway carriage full of boys going home for the holidays, human history is defrauded of a moment's vision. Its eye, that would see through me, shuts—if I sleep now, through slovenliness, or cowardice, burying myself in the past, in the dark; or acquiesce, as Bernard acquiesces, telling stories; or boast, as Percival, Archie, John, Walter, Lathom, Larpent, Roper, Smith boast—the names are the same always, the names of the boasting boys. They are all boasting, all talking, except Neville, who slips a look occasionally over the edge of a French novel, and so will always slip into cushioned firelit rooms, with many books and one friend, while I tilt on an office chair behind a counter. Then I shall grow bitter and mock at them. I shall envy them their continuance down the safe traditional ways under the shade of old yew trees while I consort with cockneys and clerks, and tap the pavements of the city.“现在我们出发了。”路易斯说。“现在我悬在半空，无依无靠。我们身无所系。我们正坐着一列火车穿越英格兰。英格兰从车窗外飞逝而过，变化不定，一会儿是山，一会儿是林；一会儿是江河、杨柳，一会儿又是城镇。而我完全没有明确的落脚点。伯纳德、内维尔、珀西瓦尔、阿奇、拉本特和贝克要去牛津或剑桥，或者去爱丁堡、罗马、巴黎、柏林或美国的某所大学。我去向不明，谋生之道也不明。因此，辛酸的阴影，浓郁的口音，降落在这些金色的芒刺上，在这些红色的田野上，在这片起起伏伏绵延直达田边但从不溢出田埂之外的麦浪上。这是新生活的第一天，转动的车轮上的又一根轮辐。可是我的身体像鸟儿的影子游移不定。若不是因为我强迫自己的思维凝聚在额头，我可能也只是个过客，像草地上的影子，很快开始褪色，很快暗淡下去，消失在那边的树林中；我强迫自己来表述这一时刻，哪怕只用一行未写下的诗句；我要在源起于埃及法老时代——那时妇女们扛着红色水罐到尼罗河畔提水——这段长长的历史中留下一英寸的标记。我仿佛已经生活了好几千年。但是假如我现在合上眼睛，假如我意识不到过去和现在交汇的地方，意识不到我正坐在火车上一节三等车厢里，这节车厢坐满了放假回家的男孩子，那么人类的历史就会被窃去一小段景象。它的眼，那只总能看穿我的眼，闭上了——如果此刻我因为懒散而沉入睡梦，或因胆怯而埋头于过去、埋头于黑暗；或者默认，像伯纳德那样讲讲故事，默认一切；或者吹吹牛皮，像珀西瓦尔、阿奇、约翰、沃尔特、拉松、拉本特、罗珀和史密斯那样吹牛——总是这些不变的名字，这些吹牛的男孩子的名字。他们都在大话连篇，都在滔滔不绝，除了内维尔，他时不时地会偷偷瞥一眼一本法国小说，然后总会带上很多书和一位朋友，悄悄溜进有靠垫和炉火的房间，而那时我会歪着身子坐在柜台后面的一把办公椅子上。那时我会愤愤不平，对他们冷嘲热讽。我会嫉妒他们能在古老的紫杉树阴下继续他们安闲的旧式生活，而我却要跟伦敦佬和小职员们打交道，轻轻踏响城市的步道。

'But now disembodied, passing over fields without lodgment—(there is a river; a man fishes; there is a spire, there is the village street with its bow-windowed inn)—all is dreamlike and dim to me. These hard thoughts, this envy, this bitterness, make no lodgment in me. I am the ghost of Louis, an ephemeral passer-by, in whose mind dreams have power, and garden sounds when in the early morning petals float on fathomless depths and the birds sing. I dash and sprinkle myself with the bright waters of childhood. Its thin veil quivers. But the chained beast stamps and stamps on the shore.'“但是现在我正满心空虚，无所着落地穿过田野——（有一条河流；一个男人在垂钓；有一座尖塔，乡村街道上有一家弓形窗子的小客栈）——一切对我来说都犹如梦幻般蒙眬。这些艰涩的思想，这种嫉妒，这种愤愤不平，根本不会在我心中落脚。我是路易斯的魅影，一个瞬息而逝的过客，在我心中，梦想拥有权力。每当清早，花瓣在无底的深渊上面漂浮，鸟儿在歌唱，花园也在奏鸣。我急匆匆为自己洒下童年时代的清澈之水。它薄薄的面纱微微颤动。但是海岸上那头拴着锁链的野兽不停地跺着脚。”

'Louis and Neville,' said Bernard, 'both sit silent. Both are absorbed. Both feel the presence of other people as a separating wall. But if I find myself in company with other people, words at once make smoke rings—see how phrases at once begin to wreathe off my lips. It seems that a match is set to a fire; something burns. An elderly and apparently prosperous man, a traveller, now gets in. And I at once wish to approach him; I instinctively dislike the sense of his presence, cold, unassimilated, among us. I do not believe in separation. We are not single. Also I wish to add to my collection of valuable observations upon the true nature of human life. My book will certainly run to many volumes, embracing every known variety of man and woman. I fill my mind with whatever happens to be the contents of a room or a railway carriage as one fills a fountain-pen in an inkpot. I have a steady unquenchable thirst. Now I feel by imperceptible signs, which I cannot yet interpret but will later, that his defiance is about to thaw. His solitude shows signs of cracking. He has passed a remark about a country house. A smoke ring issues from my lips (about crops) and circles him, bringing him into contact. The human voice has a disarming quality—(we are not single, we are one). As we exchange these few but amiable remarks about country houses, I furbish him up and make him concrete. He is indulgent as a husband but not faithful; a small builder who employs a few men. In local society he is important; is already a councillor, and perhaps in time will be mayor. He wears a large ornament, like a double tooth torn up by the roots, made of coral, hanging at his watch-chain. Walter J. Trumble is the sort of name that would fit him. He has been in America, on a business trip with his wife, and a double room in a smallish hotel cost him a whole month's wages. His front tooth is stopped with gold.“路易斯和内维尔，”伯纳德说，“都坐着不说话。两人都聚精会神。两人都觉得别人的存在是一道隔离墙。可是我若发现自己有人作伴，话语立刻像烟圈似的袅袅升起——瞧瞧我的妙语是如何脱口而出的。好像一根火柴划着了，点燃了什么东西。这时，一位上了年纪、显然事业有成的男人，一位游客，上车了。我立刻想要接近他；我本能地不喜欢他一个人冷冰冰、不合群地置身于我们中间的那种感觉。我不赞成彼此疏远。我们并非独处世上。而且我希望收集到更多有价值的关于人生真谛的观察资料。我的著作当然要卷帙浩繁，把每一种类型的男男女女都包罗在内。不管一个房间或一节车厢里的人有些什么样的经历，都会把我的头脑填得满满的，就像在墨水瓶里灌满自来水笔一样。我总有一种难以克制的渴望。现在我凭借种种细微的迹象，这我暂时还无法解释清楚，但是以后会的，发觉他的抗拒心理即将缓和。他的静默正是开解的迹象。他刚对一处乡间宅院发表了一句议论。我嘴上就吐出一个烟圈（关于庄稼），绕着他，与他取得了联系。人类声音有消除警惕的特质（我们并非独处世上，我们本是一体）。我们对乡间宅院交换了寥寥几句但却亲切的话语之后，我就让他容光焕发，也使他开诚布公了。他是个纵容却并不忠诚的丈夫，一个雇着几个人的小建筑商。他在当地社会是个名人；已经是一位政务会委员，说不定以后会当上市长。他戴了一件挺大的饰物，像连根拔起的一颗复齿，是珊瑚做的，挂在他的表链上。沃尔特·J·特朗布尔这类名字才适合他。他去过美国，带着妻子出了一趟公差，一家小旅馆的一个双人房间花掉了他整整一个月的薪水。他的一颗门牙镶了金子。

'The fact is that I have little aptitude for reflection. I require the concrete in everything. It is so only that I lay hands upon the world. A good phrase, however, seems to me to have an independent existence. Yet I think it is likely that the best are made in solitude. They require some final refrigeration which I cannot give them, dabbling always in warm soluble words. My method, nevertheless, has certain advantages over theirs. Neville is repelled by the grossness of Trumble. Louis, glancing, tripping with the high step of a disdainful crane, picks up words as if in sugar-tongs. It is true that his eyes—wild, laughing, yet desperate—express something that we have not gauged. There is about both Neville and Louis a precision, an exactitude, that I admire and shall never possess. Now I begin to be aware that action is demanded. We approach a junction; at a junction I have to change. I have to board a train for Edinburgh. I cannot precisely lay fingers on this fact—it lodges loosely among my thoughts like a button, like a small coin. Here is the jolly old boy who collects tickets. I had one—I had one certainly. But it does not matter. Either I shall find it, or I shall not find it. I examine my note-case. I look in all my pockets. These are the things that for ever interrupt the process upon which I am eternally engaged of finding some perfect phrase that fits this very moment exactly.'“事实上我不大善于深思。我要求一切具体化。要做到这一点，只有让我的双手触摸到这个世界。不过对我来说，一句妙语似乎也有它独立的生命。但我想最佳妙语大概是在静默中产生的吧。它们需要某种最后的冷藏，而我却办不到，我总是在温暖、易溶的词语中浅尝则止。不过，我这一套却有种种高人一筹的好处。内维尔被特朗布尔的粗俗弄得很烦。路易斯呢，偶尔瞥过来一眼，像一只迈着高步、轻快地走来走去的高傲的仙鹤，他随意地抓取词语，仿佛是方糖夹钳夹取糖果。的确，他的目光——野蛮，含着笑，还有极度的渴望——表达着我们不曾估量到的内容。内维尔和路易斯的身上都有一种精细，或曰精确的特点，这是我所羡慕却无法具备的。此时我开始意识到必须活动活动。我们快到中转站了，到了中转站我就得换车。我得搭上开往爱丁堡的火车。我无法精确地把握这一事实——它像一颗纽扣，像一枚小小的硬币，散落在我的思绪中间。那位乐呵呵的收票的老兄过来了。我有票——我当然有票。不过这没关系。我要么找到它，要么找不到它。我仔细翻了我的皮夹子。我找遍了我所有的衣兜。正是这些事情老是打断我的思维进程，使我不能持续专注于找到一个完美的词语来恰如其分地表述眼前这一时刻。”

'Bernard has gone,' said Neville, 'without a ticket. He has escaped us, making a phrase, waving his hand. He talked as easily to the horse-breeder or to the plumber as to us. The plumber accepted him with devotion. "If he had a son like that," he was thinking, "he would manage to send him to Oxford."But what did Bernard feel for the plumber? Did he not only wish to continue the sequence of the story which he never stops telling himself? He began it when he rolled his bread into pellets as a child. One pellet was a man, one was a woman. We are all pellets. We are all phrases in Bernard's story, things he writes down in his notebook under A or under B. He tells our story with extraordinary understanding, except of what we most feel. For he does not need us. He is never at our mercy. There he is, waving his arms on the platform. The train has gone without him. He has missed his connection. He has lost his ticket. But that does not matter. He will talk to the barmaid about the nature of human destiny. We are off; he has forgotten us already; we pass out of his view; we go on, filled with lingering sensations, half bitter, half sweet, for he is somehow to be pitied, breasting the world with half-finished phrases, having lost his ticket: he is also to be loved.“伯纳德走了，”内维尔说，“一张票也没有。他编了一句词儿，挥了挥手，就撇下我们走了。他跟那个养马的人或那个管子工说起话来，就像跟我们说话一样应付自如。那个管子工真心实意地接受了他。‘要是他养这么个儿子，’他心想，‘一定设法送他上牛津。’可是伯纳德怎么看那个管子工呢？难道他不是只想着把那个一直讲给自己听的故事继续讲下去么？从孩提时代他把面包揉成团起，他的故事就开始了。一种团是男人，一种团是女人。我们都是一个个面团。我们都是伯纳德故事中的词，是他记在日记本里Ａ栏或Ｂ栏下的事。他以超常的理解力讲着我们的故事，只是不明白我们最感动的是什么。因为他根本不需要我们。他从不受我们的摆布。他就在那儿，在月台上，挥舞着手臂。火车开走了， 没载着他。他没转成车。他把车票弄丢了。不过那也没关系。他会跟那位酒吧女招待谈谈人类命运的本质。我们开走了；他已经忘了我们；我们驶出他的视野；我们继续赶路，心头满是萦回不去的情感，苦甜参半；他要凭那些半吊子词闯荡世界，而且还丢了车票，他会让人怜悯：他也会得到爱的。

'Now I pretend again to read. I raise my book, till it almost covers my eyes. But I cannot read in the presence of horse-dealers and plumbers. I have no power of ingratiating myself. I do not admire that man; he does not admire me. Let me at least be honest. Let me denounce this piffling, trifling, self-satisfied world; these horse-hair seats; these coloured photographs of piers and parades. I could shriek aloud at the smug self-satisfaction, at the mediocrity of this world, which breeds horse-dealers with coral ornaments hanging from their watch-chains. There is that in me which will consume them entirely. My laughter shall make them twist in their seats; shall drive them howling before me. No; they are immortal. They triumph. They will make it impossible for me always to read Catullus in a third-class railway carriage. They will drive me in October to take refuge in one of the universities, where I shall become a don; and go with schoolmasters to Greece; and lecture on the ruins of the Parthenon. It would be better to breed horses and live in one of those red villas than to run in and out of the skulls of Sophocles and Euripides like a maggot, with a high-minded wife, one of those University women. That, however, will be my fate. I shall suffer. I am already at eighteen capable of such contempt that horse-breeders hate me. That is my triumph; I do not compromise. I am not timid; I have no accent. I do not finick about fearing what people think of "my father a banker at Brisbane" like Louis.“现在我又假装读起书来。我把书举起来，直到它几乎遮住了我的眼睛。可是我无法当着马贩子和管子工的面读书。我可没有自娱自乐的本事。我看不上那人；那人也看不上我。至少让我诚实一点吧。让我来控诉这个无聊、琐碎、自鸣得意的世界；这些马毛座椅；还有这些突堤和游行队伍的彩色照片。看到那种洋洋得意的自满情态；看到世上这些庸碌之辈，这世界竟然养育出表链上挂着珊瑚饰物的马贩子，我会大声尖叫的。我心中的那股火会把他们统统化为灰烬。我的笑声会让他们蜷缩在座位上，会逼得他们在我面前哀号。不，他们是不朽的。他们会赢得胜利。他们将使我无法在一节三等车厢里阅读卡图卢斯的作品。他们将逼迫我在十月份逃进一所大学，我将在那儿做一名导师；然后和教师们一起去希腊；还要在帕提侬神庙的废墟上面开讲座。最好是去养马，住进一幢红色的别墅里，不要像蛆虫一样在索福克勒斯和欧里庇得斯的骸骨里钻进钻出，再娶个品格高尚的太太，一位大学女子。可是，那将是我的命运啊。我将遭受苦难。我已经十八岁了，就这么目中无人，惹得马贩子们恨透了我。这是我的胜利；我决不妥协。我不是胆小怕事的人；我不带一点口音。我不像路易斯那样吹毛求疵，担心人家会怎么想‘我的父亲是布里斯班的银行家’。

'Now we draw near the centre of the civilized world. There are the familiar gasometers. There are the public gardens intersected by asphalt paths. There are the lovers lying shamelessly mouth to mouth on the burnt grass. Percival is now almost in Scotland; his train draws through the red moors; he sees the long line of the Border hills and the Roman wall. He reads a detective novel, yet understands everything.“此刻我们就要临近文明世界的中心。那儿有些熟悉的储气罐。那儿有些公园，当中的柏油小路纵横交错。那儿有些恋人，不知羞臊地嘴对嘴躺在枯草上。珀西瓦尔现在差不多快到苏格兰了；他的火车正穿过那片红色荒原；他看见连绵成一线的边界山和罗马墙。他在读一本侦探小说，不过一切都毫无悬念。

The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exultation. I am about to meet—what? What extraordinary adventure waits me, among these mail vans, these porters, these swarms of people calling taxis? I feel insignificant, lost, but exultant. With a soft shock we stop. I will let the others get out before me. I will sit still one moment before I emerge into that chaos, that tumult. I will not anticipate what is to come. The huge uproar is in my ears. It sounds and resounds, under this glass roof like the surge of a sea. We are cast down on the platform with our handbags. We are whirled asunder. My sense of self almost perishes; my contempt. I become drawn in, tossed down, thrown sky-high. I step out on to the platform, grasping tightly all that I possess—one bag.'

随着我们渐渐临近伦敦这个中心，火车开始减速、加长，我的心也膨胀起来，又惊又喜。我即将碰到——什么呢？在这些邮车、搬运工和招呼出租车的人群中间，会有什么样的不平凡经历等着我呢？我感到渺小、失落，却又兴奋。轻轻一震，我们停了下来。我要让别人先下车，我后下。我要静静地先坐一会儿，再投入那片纷乱和嘈杂中。我不想预料随之而来的事。巨大的喧嚣传入我的耳中。它就像大海的浪潮，在这片玻璃穹顶下面轰响，回荡。我们被甩在月台上，只带着随身的手提包。我们被旋流打散。我几乎丧失了自我意识，连同我的轻蔑心理。我被吸了进来，掷了下去，又被高高地抛上天。我踏上月台，紧紧抓住我的所有——一个手提包。”

The sun rose. Bars of yellow and green fell on the shore, gilding the ribs of the eaten-out boat and making the sea-holly and its mailed leaves gleam blue as steel. Light almost pierced the thin swift waves as they raced fan-shaped over the beach. The girl who had shaken her head and made all the jewels, the topaz, the aquamarine, the water-coloured jewels with sparks of fire in them, dance, now bared her brows and with wide-opened eyes drove a straight pathway over the waves. Their quivering mackerel sparkling was darkened; they massed themselves; their green hollows deepened and darkened and might be traversed by shoals of wandering fish. As they splashed and drew back they left a black rim of twigs and cork on the shore and straws and sticks of wood, as if some light shallop had foundered and burst its sides and the sailor had swum to land and bounded up the cliff and left his frail cargo to be washed ashore.

太阳升了起来。一条条黄绿色的光影投在海滩上，把那艘历经风雨的船骨架镀了一层金色，还使得那株海滨刺芹和它铠甲似的叶子发出钢铁一样的蓝光。那层薄薄的、迅疾的海浪呈扇形冲上沙滩，几乎一下子就被光芒刺穿了。那个女郎，刚才晃动着脑袋，让她所有的珠宝，黄宝石、水蓝宝石、中间闪光的水彩色宝石，都舞动不已，此时露出她的双眉，用她睁大的双眼在海浪上开辟出一条直直的通道。它们颤动的、鲭鱼似的闪光暗淡下来；它们聚成一团；它们绿色的波谷幽深、晦暗，可能正有成群的游鱼经过。随着浪花飞溅、退去，它们在海滩上留下黑黑的一线细枝、软木、草秸和木棍，好似一叶轻舟沉没了，碎裂了，而那位水手已游向陆地，跃上了悬崖，任凭他脆弱的货物被冲到岸上。

In the garden the birds that had sung erratically and spasmodically in the dawn on that tree, on that bush, now sang together in chorus, shrill and sharp; now together, as if conscious of companionship, now alone as if to the pale blue sky. They swerved, all in one flight, when the black cat moved among the bushes, when the cook threw cinders on the ash heap and startled them. Fear was in their song, and apprehension of pain, and joy to be snatched quickly now at this instant. Also they sang emulously in the clear morning air, swerving high over the elm tree, singing together as they chased each other, escaping, pursuing, pecking each other as they turned high in the air. And then tiring of pursuit and flight, lovelily they came descending, delicately declining, dropped down and sat silent on the tree, on the wall, with their bright eyes glancing, and their heads turned this way, that way; aware, awake; intensely conscious of one thing, one object in particular.

花园里，鸟儿从黎明时起就在那棵树上，在那株灌木上，断断续续、毫无规律地鸣唱，这会儿开始了齐声和鸣，尖锐而又响亮；听，它们的和声，仿佛与伴侣声气相求，听，一个单音，仿佛独向苍穹倾述。当黑猫在灌木丛中移动，当厨子把煤渣倒在灰堆上，它们受到惊吓，一哄而散，都飞走了。它们的歌声中有恐惧，有对苦难的忧虑，还有此刻及时抓住的欢乐。它们还在这早晨的清新气息里竞赛似地歌唱，高高地飞过榆树梢头；它们一边唱着，一边互相追逐；有的逃，有的追，你啄我，我啄你，一起飞上高空。后来厌倦了追与逃，它们就优美地向下飞，轻巧地下降，下落，悄无声息地停在树上，墙头上，明亮的眼睛左顾右盼，脑袋转来转去；既警觉，又清醒；紧张地关注着一样东西，某个特定的目标。

Perhaps it was a snail shell, rising in the grass like a grey cathedral, a swelling building burnt with dark rings and shadowed green by the grass. Or perhaps they saw the splendour of the flowers making a light of flowing purple over the beds, through which dark tunnels of purple shade were driven between the stalks. Or they fixed their gaze on the small bright apple leaves, dancing yet withheld, stiffly sparkling among the pink-tipped blossoms. Or they saw the rain drop on the hedge, pendent but not falling, with a whole house bent in it, and towering elms; or, gazing straight at the sun, their eyes became gold beads.

或许那是个蜗牛壳，耸立在草丛中，像一座灰色的教堂，一座凸起的建筑，上面刻有晦暗的圈圈，被草映得发绿。或许它们看到了花儿的壮美，那些花儿在花坛上面形成一道流泻的紫光，透到下面，在花茎与花茎之间开辟出一条条幽暗的、紫色花荫的隧道。或许它们在定睛注视那些小小的、闪亮的苹果树叶，那些叶子翩翩起舞却有几分矜持，在粉顶的花朵之间拘谨地闪烁。或许它们看见了树篱上的雨滴，垂而不落，整个一幢房子和那些高耸的榆树都委曲其中；或许它们正直直地盯着太阳，眼睛变成了金色的珠子。

Now glancing this side, that side, they looked deeper, beneath the flowers, down the dark avenues into the unlit world where the leaf rots and the flower has fallen. Then one of them, beautifully darting, accurately alighting, spiked the soft, monstrous body of the defenceless worm, pecked again and yet again, and left it to fester. Down there among the roots where the flowers decayed, gusts of dead smells were wafted; drops formed on the bloated sides of swollen things. The skin of rotten fruit broke, and matter oozed too thick to run. Yellow excretions were exuded by slugs, and now and again an amorphous body with a head at either end swayed slowly from side to side. The gold-eyed birds darting in between the leaves observed that purulence, that wetness, quizzically. Now and then they plunged the tips of their beaks savagely into the sticky mixture.

瞧，在左顾右盼之后，它们的目光深入到花儿下面，沿着幽暗的花阴大道开始探视那个败叶落花所在的无光的世界。这时它们之一优雅地冲了出去，准确地落了下来，尖喙刺入一条毫无防卫的虫子那又软又大的身体，啄了又啄，使那条虫子遍体鳞伤。在花枝下面，花根之间，落花开始腐烂，浮动着阵阵死亡的气息；在那些膨胀的东西四周聚满水珠。烂果子的皮破了，冒出的果肉粘滞不动。黄色的分泌物是蛞蝓所为，而且时不时会有一具形状不定的身体，两端各有一只脑袋，一摇一摆地缓缓移动。冲进落叶中的金色眼睛的鸟儿疑惑地审视着眼前这片脓液和潮湿。不时地它们把喙尖狠狠地戳进粘湿的混合物中。

Now, too, the rising sun came in at the window, touching the red-edged curtain, and began to bring out circles and lines. Now in the growing light its whiteness settled in the plate; the blade condensed its gleam. Chairs and cupboards loomed behind so that though each was separate they seemed inextricably involved. The looking-glass whitened its pool upon the wall. The real flower on the window-sill was attended by a phantom flower. Yet the phantom was part of the flower, for when a bud broke free the paler flower in the glass opened a bud too.

这时，升起的太阳也来到窗前，摩挲着镶着红边的窗帘，让上面呈现出一些圈圈道道。此刻在越来越强的光线中，它的白色映在盘子上；刀刃也愈发光亮。椅子和橱柜隐约在后面闪现，所以尽管它们各自独立，看上去却难解难分。墙上镜子的反光更加洁白。窗台上的真花伴着花影。但是那影子也是花的一部分，因为每当一个花蕾倏然绽放，镜中那支苍白的花也会绽放一个蓓蕾。

The wind rose. The waves drummed on the shore, like turbaned warriors, like turbaned men with poisoned assegais who, whirling their arms on high, advance upon the feeding flocks, the white sheep.

起风了。浪涛击鼓似的拍打着海岸，像包着头巾的勇士，像包着头巾的人高高地抡起臂膀，手持毒矛冲向那觅食的畜群，那些洁白的绵羊。

'The complexity of things becomes more close,' said Bernard, 'here at college, where the stir and pressure of life are so extreme, where the excitement of mere living becomes daily more urgent. Every hour something new is unburied in the great bran pie. What am I? I ask. This? No, I am that. Especially now, when I have left a room, and people talking, and the stone flags ring out with my solitary footsteps, and I behold the moon rising, sublimely, indifferently, over the ancient chapel—then it becomes clear that I am not one and simple, but complex and many. Bernard, in public, bubbles; in private, is secretive. That is what they do not understand, for they are now undoubtedly discussing me, saying I escape them, am evasive. They do not understand that I have to effect different transitions; have to cover the entrances and exits of several different men who alternately act their parts as Bernard. I am abnormally aware of circumstances. I can never read a book in a railway carriage without asking, Is he a builder? Is she unhappy? I was aware today acutely that poor Simes, with his pimple, was feeling, how bitterly, that his chance of making a good impression upon Billy Jackson was remote. Feeling this painfully, I invited him to dinner with ardour. This he will attribute to an admiration which is not mine. That is true. But "joined to the sensibility of a woman" (I am here quoting my own biographer) "Bernard possessed the logical sobriety of a man."Now people who make a single impression, and that, in the main, a good one (for there seems to be a virtue in simplicity), are those who keep their equilibrium in mid-stream. (I instantly see fish with their noses one way, the stream rushing past another.) Canon, Lycett, Peters, Hawkins, Larpent, Neville—all fish in mid-stream. But you understand, YOU, my self, who always comes at a call (that would be a harrowing experience to call and for no one to come; that would make the midnight hollow, and explains the expression of old men in clubs—they have given up calling for a self who does not come), you understand that I am only superficially represented by what I was saying tonight. Underneath, and, at the moment when I am most disparate, I am also integrated. I sympathize effusively; I also sit, like a toad in a hole, receiving with perfect coldness whatever comes. Very few of you who are now discussing me have the double capacity to feel, to reason. Lycett, you see, believes in running after hares; Hawkins has spent a most industrious afternoon in the library. Peters has his young lady at the circulating library. You are all engaged, involved, drawn in, and absolutely energized to the top of your bent—all save Neville, whose mind is far too complex to be roused by any single activity. I also am too complex. In my case something remains floating, unattached.“错综复杂的形式愈加逼人，”伯纳德说，“在这大学里，生活忙乱操心到了极点，单纯生活的兴奋显得一天比一天更重要了。这个麦麸大馅饼里每时每刻都会掘出新的东西。我属于哪一类？我问道。这类？不，我属于那一类。尤其现在，我离开了房间，人们还在交谈，石板路上响起我孤单的脚步声，我看见月亮升起，那样高贵、冷漠，照耀着古老的教堂——这时，我显然不是简单的个人，而是复杂的众人。伯纳德在公开场合滔滔不绝；私下里却守口如瓶。这是他们所不明白的，因为这会儿他们毫无疑问在议论我，说我逃避他们，说我遮遮掩掩。他们不明白，我必须完成不同的角色转换；必须掩护轮流扮演伯纳德的几个不同的人的登场和退场。我异常关注各种情况。我绝不可能在车厢里看书，如果事先不问一声，他是个建筑商吗？她不幸福吗？今天，我深深地意识到，那个长了粉刺的可怜的塞姆斯觉得多么痛苦；他给比利·杰克逊留下好印象的机会那么渺茫。我为这一点感到痛心，所以热情地邀请他一起吃饭。这样做，他会归功于一份仰慕，而事实上我没有。真的。不过，‘虽然近于女性的多情善感’，（此处引用为我写传记的人的话）‘伯纳德拥有男子汉的逻辑分明的冷静’。瞧，给人留下单一印象，一般来说是个好印象的人（因为简约中似乎自有其美德），总能岿然屹立于中流。（我的眼前立即浮现出那些鱼儿，它们坚定地朝着一个方向，尽管水流奔向他方。）卡农、莱西特、彼得斯、霍金斯、拉本特、内维尔——都是中流的鱼儿。不过你要明白，你，召之即来的我的本体（召之不来的经历可谓惨痛；夜半将为之空虚；俱乐部里的老人们那样的表情，正是由来于此——他们已经放弃了召唤自己永不再来的本体），你要明白，今晚我所说的一切都只代表了我肤浅的一面。骨子里，当我与众不同的那一刻，我也是和谐统一的。我的共鸣热情洋溢；我也会坐在那儿，像洞里的癞蛤蟆一样，不管发生什么都十分冷静地接受。这会儿正在议论我的人，你们当中很少有人具备这种感知与推理的双重能力。你瞧，莱西特热衷于撵兔子；霍金斯在图书馆里度过了一个相当刻苦的下午。彼得斯在流动图书馆里有个年轻的女友。你们都在忙忙碌碌，深陷其中，无法自拔，你们使出浑身解数，简直登峰造极——只有内维尔除外，他的头脑复杂得多，不被任何单一活动所左右。我也是头脑过于复杂。在我这个人身上有某种东西一直在飘荡，无所依附。

'Now, as a proof of my susceptibility to atmosphere, here, as I come into my room, and turn on the light, and see the sheet of paper, the table, my gown lying negligently over the back of the chair, I feel that I am that dashing yet reflective man, that bold and deleterious figure, who, lightly throwing off his cloak, seizes his pen and at once flings off the following letter to the girl with whom he is passionately in love.“瞧，我对这里的气氛很敏感的一个证据是，当我走进房间，点上灯，看见纸张、桌子和随意搭在椅背上的我的睡衣，我感觉自己就是那位不顾一切而又深思熟虑的人，那位大胆而危险的人物，他轻轻地甩掉斗篷，抓起笔来，随即给他热恋的女孩炮制出一封信。

'Yes, all is propitious. I am now in the mood. I can write the letter straight off which I have begun ever so many times. I have just come in; I have flung down my hat and my stick; I am writing the first thing that comes into my head without troubling to put the paper straight. It is going to be a brilliant sketch which, she must think, was written without a pause, without an erasure. Look how unformed the letters are—there is a careless blot. All must be sacrificed to speed and carelessness. I will write a quick, running, small hand, exaggerating the down stroke of the "y" and crossing the "t" thus—with a dash. The date shall be only Tuesday, the 17th, and then a question mark. But also I must give her the impression that though he—for this is not myself—is writing in such an off-hand, such a slap-dash way, there is some subtle suggestion of intimacy and respect. I must allude to talks we have had together—bring back some remembered scene. But I must seem to her (this is very important) to be passing from thing to thing with the greatest ease in the world. I shall pass from the service for the man who was drowned (I have a phrase for that) to Mrs Moffat and her sayings (I have a note of them), and so to some reflections apparently casual but full of profundity (profound criticism is often written casually) about some book I have been reading, some out-of-the-way book. I want her to say as she brushes her hair or puts out the candle, "Where did I read that? Oh, in Bernard's letter."It is the speed, the hot, molten effect, the laval flow of sentence into sentence that I need. Who am I thinking of? Byron of course. I am, in some ways, like Byron. Perhaps a sip of Byron will help to put me in the vein. Let me read a page. No; this is dull; this is scrappy. This is rather too formal. Now I am getting the hang of it. Now I am getting his beat into my brain (the rhythm is the main thing in writing). Now, without pausing I will begin, on the very lilt of the stroke—.“是的，一切都是好兆头。我这会儿心情正好。我可以一气呵成，完成这封我多次开头却未完成的信。我刚刚进屋；我扔下帽子和手杖；我顾不上把纸摊平，赶紧写下浮现在我脑海中的第一件事。这极有可能是一篇出色的随笔，她一定会认为，它的完成是一挥而就、绝无删改的。瞧瞧这些字母多么散漫——还有个粗心的墨点。一切都要为才思敏捷和随心所欲做出牺牲。我要用行云流水般的小字体，字母Y向下的一划要极尽夸张，字母ｔ那一横也要格外用力。日期只需写上星期二，17号，然后打上一个问号。不过我还必须给她留下这样的印象，那就是，尽管他——因为这不是我本人——写得如此随便而潦草，却微妙地暗示了某种程度的亲密与敬意。我必须不经意地提及我们俩一起说过的话——勾起某个记忆中的场景。但是我必须让她觉得（这很重要），我是极为轻松自如地写下一件又一件事情的。我要提到为那个溺水而死的人所做的仪式（对此我有措辞），提到莫法特太太和她的名言警句（对此我有记录），还要提出一些看似随意实则深刻的看法（深刻的批评常常就是随意而为），它关于某一本我一直在读的书，一本不入主流的书。我希望她在梳头或熄灭蜡烛时自言自语：‘我是在哪儿读到那些话的？哦，是在伯纳德的信中。’我需要的就是这种敏捷的才思，这种火热融融的效果，一句一句好像岩浆奔流。我想到了谁？当然是拜伦。某些方面，我跟拜伦一样。或许提到拜伦会更有助于让我血液沸腾。让我来读一页吧。不，那是无聊，那是拼凑。那是太过一本正经。瞧，我正在得其法门。瞧，我正在让他的节奏进入我的脑海（韵律是写作中主要的东西）。好了，再不迟疑，伴着轻快的笔画，我要开始写——

'Yet it falls flat. It peters out. I cannot get up steam enough to carry me over the transition. My true self breaks off from my assumed. And if I begin to re-write it, she will feel "Bernard is posing as a literary man; Bernard is thinking of his biographer" (which is true). No, I will write the letter tomorrow directly after breakfast.“但是一切都落空了。一切渐渐消失了。我无法打起足够的精神来继续这一转换。真实的我脱离了假想的我。而我如果开始重写，她会觉得‘伯纳德在装腔作势假扮文人；伯纳德想到的是为他写传记的那个人’（确实如此）。不，我要明天早饭后马上来写这封信。

'Now let me fill my mind with imaginary pictures. Let me suppose that I am asked to stay at Restover, King's Laughton, Station Langley three miles. I arrive in the dusk. In the courtyard of this shabby but distinguished house there are two or three dogs, slinking, long-legged. There are faded rugs in the hall; a military gentleman smokes a pipe as he paces the terrace. The note is of distinguished poverty and military connections. A hunter's hoof on the writing table—a favourite horse. "Do you ride?""Yes, sir, I love riding.""My daughter expects us in the drawing-room.”My heart pounds against my ribs. She is standing at a low table; she has been hunting; she munches sandwiches like a tomboy. I make a fairly good impression on the Colonel. I am not too clever, he thinks; I am not too raw. Also I play billiards. Then the nice maid who has been with the family thirty years comes in. The pattern on the plates is of Oriental long-tailed birds. Her mother's portrait in muslin hangs over the fireplace. I can sketch the surroundings up to a point with extraordinary ease. But can I make it work? Can I hear her voice—the precise tone with which, when we are alone, she says "Bernard"? And then what next?“现在，让我的脑海充满想象的画面吧。让我假设我被邀请到距离兰利车站三英里的皇家劳顿庄园的蕾斯托夫家做客。我在暮色中到达。在这幢破旧但尊贵的宅邸庭院里，有两三条狗，长长的腿，鬼鬼祟祟的。大厅里铺着褪色的小块地毯；一位军人模样的绅士一边吸着烟斗一边在露台上踱步。总的气氛传达出一种高贵的清贫以及与军界有种种联系。一只猎兽的蹄子摆在写字台上——那是一匹主人中意的马。‘你骑马么？’‘是的，先生，我爱骑马。’‘我的女儿在客厅等我们呢。’我的心在胸口怦怦直跳。她正站在一张矮桌边上；她刚打猎归来；她像个假小子似的大口嚼着三明治。我给上校留下了相当好的印象。我不算太聪明，他觉得；我也不算太笨。而且我会打台球。这时，那位与这家人相处了三十年的好心女仆走了进来。盘子上的图案画的是东方的长尾鸟。她母亲身着平纹细布衣的肖像挂在壁炉上方。我能够异常轻松地把这里的环境归结为一点。可是我能不能让它产生效果呢？我能不能听见她的声音——我们独处时她叫‘伯纳德’的那种恰如其分的语调？接着，下一步会怎样呢？

'The truth is that I need the stimulus of other people. Alone, over my dead fire, I tend to see the thin places in my own stories. The real novelist, the perfectly simple human being, could go on, indefinitely, imagining. He would not integrate, as I do. He would not have this devastating sense of grey ashes in a burnt-out grate. Some blind flaps in my eyes. Everything becomes impervious. I cease to invent.“事实上，我需要别人的激励。一个人，就着暗淡的火光，我常常发现自己那些故事当中的薄弱之处。真正的小说家，十足简约的人，是能够无限地想象下去的。他不会像我这样追求和谐统一。他不会有这种炉火燃尽唯余死灰的幻灭感。我的眼中浮动着一层阴翳。一切都无法说通。我无法虚构下去了。

'Let me recollect. It has been on the whole a good day. The drop that forms on the roof of the soul in the evening is round, many-coloured. There was the morning, fine; there was the afternoon, walking. I like views of spires across grey fields. I like glimpses between people's shoulders. Things kept popping into my head. I was imaginative, subtle. After dinner, I was dramatic. I put into concrete form many things that we had dimly observed about our common friends. I made my transitions easily. But now let me ask myself the final question, as I sit over this grey fire, with its naked promontories of black coal, which of these people am I? It depends so much upon the room. When I say to myself, "Bernard", who comes? A faithful, sardonic man, disillusioned, but not embittered. A man of no particular age or calling. Myself, merely. It is he who now takes the poker and rattles the cinders so that they fall in showers through the grate. "Lord," he says to himself, watching them fall, "what a pother!"and then he adds, lugubriously, but with some sense of consolation, "Mrs Moffat will come and sweep it all up—” I fancy I shall often repeat to myself that phrase, as I rattle and bang through life, hitting first this side of the carriage, then the other, "Oh, yes, Mrs Moffat will come and sweep it all up."And so to bed.'“让我来回忆吧。总体来说，过去的一天是美好的。傍晚时凝聚在灵魂之巅的这滴露珠是圆润而多彩的。早上，晴好；下午，一直在散步。我喜欢穿过灰色田野的座座尖塔的景象。我喜欢不经意地从人们肩膀之间望出去。事情不断地涌入我的脑海。我想象丰富，思维敏锐。晚饭之后，我开始做戏。我把在我们共同的几个朋友身上依稀观察到的许多事情具体地加以描述。我轻而易举地做着各种角色转换。但是现在，当我坐下来，就着棱角分明的黑煤燃起的这点灰暗的火光，让我问自己最后一个问题：那些人当中的哪一个才是真正的我？这在很大程度上取决于房间里的情况。当我对自己叫一声‘伯纳德’的时候，来的是谁呢？是一个诚实而喜欢嘲弄的人，幻想破灭，却不怨天尤人。是一个没有特定年龄或使命的人。是我自己，仅此而已。就是这个人，此时操起火棍，拨动煤渣，使其纷纷落下炉膛。‘天啊，’他望着落下的煤渣，自言自语：‘好大的灰！’接着，他又安慰性地继续哀叹道：‘莫法特太太会来把它们统统打扫干净的——’我想象到——因为我一生都在鼓捣来鼓捣去，先敲敲车厢这面，再敲敲另一面——我会经常对自己重复这句话：‘哦，对了，莫法特太太会来把它们统统打扫干净的。’然后我就上床了。”

'In a world which contains the present moment,' said Neville, 'why discriminate? Nothing should be named lest by so doing we change it. Let it exist, this bank, this beauty, and I, for one instant, steeped in pleasure. The sun is hot. I see the river. I see trees specked and burnt in the autumn sunlight. Boats float past, through the red, through the green. Far away a bell tolls, but not for death. There are bells that ring for life. A leaf falls, from joy. Oh, I am in love with life! Look how the willow shoots its fine sprays into the air! Look how through them a boat passes, filled with indolent, with unconscious, with powerful young men. They are listening to the gramophone; they are eating fruit out of paper bags. They are tossing the skins of bananas, which then sink eel-like, into the river. All they do is beautiful. There are cruets behind them and ornaments; their rooms are full of oars and oleographs but they have turned all to beauty. That boat passes under the bridge. Another comes. Then another. That is Percival, lounging on the cushions, monolithic, in giant repose. No, it is only one of his satellites, imitating his monolithic, his giant repose. He alone is unconscious of their tricks, and when he catches them at it he buffets them good-humouredly with a blow of his paw. They, too, have passed under the bridge through 'the fountains of the pendant trees', through its fine strokes of yellow and plum colour. The breeze stirs; the curtain quivers; I see behind the leaves the grave, yet eternally joyous buildings, which seem porous, not gravid; light, though set so immemorially on the ancient turf. Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and fall and rise again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet. Boats and youth passing and distant trees, "the falling fountains of the pendant trees". I see it all. I feel it all. I am inspired. My eyes fill with tears. Yet even as I feel this, I lash my frenzy higher and higher. It foams. It becomes artificial, insincere. Words and words and words, how they gallop—how they lash their long manes and tails, but for some fault in me I cannot give myself to their backs; I cannot fly with them, scattering women and string bags. There is some flaw in me—some fatal hesitancy, which, if I pass it over, turns to foam and falsity. Yet it is incredible that I should not be a great poet. What did I write last night if it was not good poetry? Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.“在一个由当前时刻构成的世界，”内维尔说，“为什么要有区别对待呢？不该给事物命名，我们这样做只会改变它。这条河岸，这片美景，让它存在吧，而我，刹那间沉浸在喜悦中。太阳火辣辣的。我望着河水。我望着秋阳下斑驳、焦黄的树木。船儿驶过，穿过红花，穿过绿野。远远地，钟声鸣响，但那不是死亡的钟声。有些钟声为生命而鸣。一片叶子，喜极而落。噢，我热爱生命！瞧那棵柳树是怎样向空中抽出它的细芽！瞧那细芽之间过往的一条船，上面坐满了懒懒散散、无思无虑、身强力壮的年轻人。他们听着留声机；他们吃着纸袋子里的水果。他们乱丢的香蕉皮像鳗鱼一样，沉到河底。他们一举一动尽显优美。他们和装饰品的后面有些佐料瓶；他们的房间塞满船桨和石版画，但是他们将一切都已化作美景。桥下，那艘船过去了。另一艘船过来了。接着又有一艘。那是珀西瓦尔，正懒洋洋地倚着靠垫，庞大的身躯像歇息的巨人。不对，那只是他的小喽啰之一，在模仿他歇息时巨人般的泰然姿态。他自己还没意识到他们的把戏，若是被他当场逮住，他就会乐呵呵地挥起老拳捶打他们。他们穿过‘垂柳的喷泉’，穿过黄色与青紫色的精致图画，也已经过到桥的那边去了。微风乍起；帘帏轻颤；透过树叶，我看见那些庄严肃穆却永远喜乐的建筑物，它们似乎松散而不臃肿；尽管无可追忆地座落在古老的泥炭地上，看上去还是那么轻盈。这时，我心中开始升起熟悉的韵律；一直蛰伏的词语抬起身子，甩动羽冠，一起一伏，又一起一伏。我是一个诗人，没错。确实，我是一个伟大的诗人。过往的轻舟与青春，远方的树木和‘垂柳的落泉’。我目睹了一切。我感受到一切。我有了灵感。我热泪盈眶。但即使当我感受到这一切的时候，我还在把我的狂热之火煽动得越来越高。它如泡沫飞溅。它变得矫揉造作、华而不实。词语，词语，还是词语，它们纵横驰骋，甩动长长的鬃毛和马尾，但是由于我自身的某种失误，我却无法让自己跨上马背；我无法驱散女人和网兜，与它们一道跃马飞奔。我身上有某种缺点——某种致命的犹豫不决，稍一不注意，它就会变成泡沫和谎言。不过，我要是不成为一个伟大的诗人，那简直是不可思议的。昨晚我写的不是优秀的诗歌是什么？我是不是写得太快、太取巧了？我不知道。有时我搞不懂自己，搞不懂如何衡量、认定，以及清点那些使我成为我的种种习性。

'Something now leaves me; something goes from me to meet that figure who is coming, and assures me that I know him before I see who it is. How curiously one is changed by the addition, even at a distance, of a friend. How useful an office one's friends perform when they recall us. Yet how painful to be recalled, to be mitigated, to have one's self adulterated, mixed up, become part of another. As he approaches I become not myself but Neville mixed with somebody—with whom?—with Bernard? Yes, it is Bernard, and it is to Bernard that I shall put the question, Who am I?'“有某种东西在这一刻离开了我；某种东西从我这里赶去会见那个姗姗而来的人物，而且让我相信，在我看清那人是谁之前我就认识他。一个人多个朋友，即使这个朋友不在眼前，也会是多么神奇的变化啊。朋友们回忆我们时，他们是在履行一个多么有益的仪式啊。当你被人回忆，被人冲淡，你的本性被人掺了假，混作一团，成为他人的附庸，却又是多么痛苦啊。那人走近时，我就不是我自己了，而是内维尔与某个人的混合体——是与谁的混合体呢？是与伯纳德么？对，就是伯纳德，我正要问问伯纳德：我是谁？”

'How strange,' said Bernard, 'the willow looks seen together. I was Byron, and the tree was Byron's tree, lachrymose, down—showering, lamenting. Now that we look at the tree together, it has a combined look, each branch distinct, and I will tell you what I feel, under the compulsion of your clarity.“多么奇怪，”伯纳德说，“仿佛跟谁一起见过那棵柳树。我曾是拜伦，那棵树曾是拜伦的树——泪如雨下，凄凄惨惨，哀哀切切。因为我们一起瞧着那棵树，它便呈现出一幅组合的样子，每根枝条都截然分明，在你清晰的思维的驱使下，我要跟你讲讲我的感受。

'I feel your disapproval, I feel your force. I become, with you, an untidy, an impulsive human being whose bandanna handkerchief is for ever stained with the grease of crumpets. Yes, I hold Gray's Elegy in one hand; with the other I scoop out the bottom crumpet, that has absorbed all the butter and sticks to the bottom of the plate. This offends you; I feel your distress acutely. Inspired by it and anxious to regain your good opinion, I proceed to tell you how I have just pulled Percival out of bed; I describe his slippers, his table, his guttered candle; his surly and complaining accents as I pull the blankets off his feet; he burrowing like some vast cocoon meanwhile. I describe all this in such a way that, centred as you are upon some private sorrow (for a hooded shape presides over our encounter), you give way, you laugh and delight in me. My charm and flow of language, unexpected and spontaneous as it is, delights me too. I am astonished, as I draw the veil off things with words, how much, how infinitely more than I can say, I have observed. More and more bubbles into my mind as I talk, images and images. This, I say to myself, is what I need; why, I ask, can I not finish the letter that I am writing? For my room is always scattered with unfinished letters. I begin to suspect, when I am with you, that I am among the most gifted of men. I am filled with the delight of youth, with potency, with the sense of what is to come. Blundering, but fervid, I see myself buzzing round flowers, humming down scarlet cups, making blue funnels resound with my prodigious booming. How richly I shall enjoy my youth (you make me feel). And London. And freedom. But stop. You are not listening. You are making some protest, as you slide, with an inexpressibly familiar gesture, your hand along your knee. By such signs we diagnose our friends' diseases. "Do not, in your affluence and plenty," you seem to say, "pass me by.""Stop," you say. "Ask me what I suffer."“我感受到你的批评，我感受到你的压力。和你在一起，我成了一个邋里邋遢、意气用事的人，大手帕上永远沾着烤面饼的油脂。是啊，我一只手捧着格雷的《挽歌》，另一只手舀起最后一块面饼，它已经吸足了黄油粘到盘底上了。这让你不痛快；我深深感觉到你的苦恼。我灵机一动，急着要赢回你的好感，所以接着跟你讲起我刚才如何把珀西瓦尔从床上拽了起来；我讲述他的桌子，他的熄灭的蜡烛；以及当我从他脚上掀掉毯子时他那粗暴和抱怨的口气；那时他像一只硕大的蚕茧直往洞里钻。我把这一切描述得那么生动，尽管你的心头萦绕着某种个人的悲伤（因为我们的会面笼罩了一层蒙眬的阴影），你还是忍不住大笑起来，对我露出喜色。我的吸引力和口若悬河，这样的出其不意、自然而然，也令我欣喜。当我用词语揭开事物的面纱，我惊讶地发现，我观察到了那么多，比我能说出的要多得多。在我开口的过程中，一幅幅画面源源不断地浮现在我的脑海中。这，我对自己说，正是我所需要的；为什么，我问道，我无法完成要写的那封信呢？我的房间总是散落着一些未完成的信件。当我跟你在一起时，我就会觉得自己处于那些最有天赋人们之列。充满青春的喜悦，充满活力，充满对未来的预感。我毛毛躁躁，但充满激情，我看见自己绕着花朵嗡嗡叫，嘤嘤地钻进鲜红的花萼，使这些蓝色的漏斗回响起我巨大的轰鸣。我会多么尽情地享受我的青春（是你让我有这样的感受）。享受伦敦生活。享受自由。但是别说了。你并不在听。你在做出某种抗议，因为你用一种我再熟悉不过的动作把你的手轻轻滑过膝盖。通过这样的手势我们为朋友们诊断病情。‘在你富庶充实时，’你仿佛在说，‘别不理我。’‘别说了。’你说。‘还是问问我遭遇了什么痛苦吧。’

'Let me then create you. (You have done as much for me.) You lie on this hot bank, in this lovely, this fading, this still bright October day, watching boat after boat float through the combed-out twigs of the willow tree. And you wish to be a poet; and you wish to be a lover. But the splendid clarity of your intelligence, and the remorseless honesty of your intellect (these Latin words I owe you; these qualities of yours make me shift a little uneasily and see the faded patches, the thin strands in my own equipment) bring you to a halt. You indulge in no mystifications. You do not fog yourself with rosy clouds, or yellow.“就让我来创作一个你吧。（你曾为我做了那么多。）你正躺在这条闷热的河岸上，在这个美丽、萧索但依然明朗的十月的一天，望着一条条船从齐刷刷的柳枝间穿过。而你希望成为一个诗人；你还希望成为某人的情人。可是你那无比清醒的头脑和决不自欺的才智（这些拉丁词语我得之于你；你的这些素养让我稍微不自然地换了个角度，看到了我自身能力中那些残缺的方面和薄弱的环节）却让你止步不前。你从不醉心于故弄玄虚。你从不为玫瑰色或黄色的云彩所迷惑。

'Am I right? Have I read the little gesture of your left hand correctly? If so, give me your poems; hand over the sheets you wrote last night in such a fervour of inspiration that you now feel a little sheepish. For you distrust inspiration, yours or mine. Let us go back together, over the bridge, under the elm trees, to my room, where, with walls round us and red serge curtains drawn, we can shut out these distracting voices, scents and savours of lime trees, and other lives; these pert shop-girls, disdainfully tripping, these shuffling, heavy-laden old women; these furtive glimpses of some vague and vanishing figure—it might be Jinny, it might be Susan, or was that Rhoda disappearing down the avenue? Again, from some slight twitch I guess your feeling; I have escaped you; I have gone buzzing like a swarm of bees, endlessly vagrant, with none of your power of fixing remorselessly upon a single object. But I will return.'“我说的对么？我是不是读懂了你左手的小动作？要是没错，把你的诗拿来给我看看吧；把你昨晚那些写得激情澎湃以至于现在还觉得有点羞臊的诗笺都递过来吧。因为你怀疑灵感，无论是你自己的，还是我的。让我们一起回去吧，从桥上，从榆树下，回到我的房间。在那儿，四面都是墙壁，红色的哔叽窗帘拉了下来，我们就能隔绝这些干扰的声音、酸橙树的清香气息和其他生灵；这些高傲地轻飘飘走过的时髦女店员，这些一步一拖、心事重重的老太太；还有这些鬼鬼祟祟的瞥视，来自某个模糊的渐渐远去的人——可能是吉尼，可能是苏珊，或者是消失在林荫道上的罗达吧？我从一丝细微的抽搐又猜到了你的感觉；我从你身边逃开了；我像一群蜜蜂嗡嗡地飞走，无边无际地游荡，因为我没有你那种能力，那么无怨无悔地专注于一件事物上。但是我会飞回来的。”

'When there are buildings like these,' said Neville, 'I cannot endure that there should be shop-girls. Their titter, their gossip, offends me; breaks into my stillness, and nudges me, in moments of purest exultation, to remember our degradation.“当有这样一些建筑物的时候，”内维尔说，“我可受不了再有那些女店员。她们的嗤嗤窃笑，她们的闲言碎语，都令我心烦；她们闯进我的静地，诱使我在最纯净的喜乐时刻想到我们的堕落。

'But now we have regained our territory after that brief brush with the bicycles and the lime scent and the vanishing figures in the distracted street. Here we are masters of tranquillity and order; inheritors of proud tradition. The lights are beginning to make yellow slits across the square. Mists from the river are filling these ancient spaces. They cling, gently, to the hoary stone. The leaves now are thick in country lanes, sheep cough in the damp fields; but here in your room we are dry. We talk privately. The fire leaps and sinks, making some knob bright.“不过，在经过了这一番与脚踏车、酸橙的清香以及纷乱的大街上远去的身影的短暂交锋之后，这会儿我们已经夺回了我们的领地。在这里，我们是安宁和秩序的主人，是光荣传统的继承者。灯火开始在广场上投下一道道黄色光影。河上升起的层层雾气弥漫了这片古老的空间。它们轻轻地附着在年代久远的石头上。此时乡村道上布满了落叶，羊群在潮湿的田野里咳嗽；但在这里，在你的房间里，我们干干爽爽。我们私下交谈着。火苗忽明忽暗，不时地把某个门把手映得通亮。

'You have been reading Byron. You have been marking the passages that seem to approve of your own character. I find marks against all those sentences which seem to express a sardonic yet passionate nature; a moth-like impetuosity dashing itself against hard glass. You thought, as you drew your pencil there, "I too throw off my cloak like that. I too snap my fingers in the face of destiny."Yet Byron never made tea as you do, who fill the pot so that when you put the lid on the tea spills over. There is a brown pool on the table—it is running among your books and papers. Now you mop it up, clumsily, with your pocket-handkerchief. You then stuff your handkerchief back into your pocket—that is not Byron; that is you; that is so essentially you that if I think of you in twenty years' time, when we are both famous, gouty and intolerable, it will be by that scene: and if you are dead, I shall weep. Once you were Tolstoi's young man; now you are Byron's young man; perhaps you will be Meredith's young man; then you will visit Paris in the Easter vacation and come back wearing a black tie, some detestable Frenchman whom nobody has ever heard of. Then I shall drop you.“你一直在读拜伦。你在那些似乎与你本人性格相符的篇章上做了标记。我发现在所有那些似乎表达一种嘲讽但充满激情的本性，一种如飞蛾般撞向硬玻璃的冲动的诗句旁都做了标记。当你用你的铅笔划出那些地方，你心想：‘我也会像那样甩掉我的斗篷。面对命运，我也会啪地打个响指。’可是拜伦绝不是像你那样泡茶，你把茶壶灌得太满，一盖上盖子，茶水就漫了出来。桌上一摊褐色的茶水——正洇到你的书和纸张中去。你用手帕笨手笨脚地赶紧把它擦干。然后你把手帕塞回衣兜——这可不是拜伦的做派；这是你的做派；这就是本质上的你，即使20年后，当我们都已成名、患痛风而疼痛难忍时，我也会凭借这一场景而想起你：如果你死了，我会流泪。曾经你像托尔斯泰；现在你像拜伦；也许将来你会像梅瑞狄斯；然后你会在复活节假期造访巴黎，回来时扎一条黑色领带，像是某个谁也没听说过的讨厌的法国人。那时我就不会理你了。

'I am one person—myself. I do not impersonate Catullus, whom I adore. I am the most slavish of students, with here a dictionary, there a notebook in which I enter curious uses of the past participle. But one cannot go on for ever cutting these ancient inscriptions clearer with a knife. Shall I always draw the red serge curtain close and see my book, laid like a block of marble, pale under the lamp? That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.“我总是一个人——我自己。我崇拜卡图卢斯，但我从不模仿他。我是学生当中最听话的，这边摆一本字典，那边摆一个笔记本，我把过去完成时的古怪用法都记在里面。但是一个人不可能永无停息地拿着刀子来精雕细刻这些古老的铭文。我会一直把红色哔叽窗帘拉得严严实实而埋头于灯下这本灰白的大理石块一样的书中么？一心追求完美；沿着句子的曲线，无论它通向哪里，荒漠之中也好，流沙下面也罢，也不管多少引诱，多少魅惑，始终坚守贫穷，任凭蓬头垢面，甘愿成为皮卡迪利大街上的笑柄，那将是多么辉煌的一生。

'But I am too nervous to end my sentence properly. I speak quickly, as I pace up and down, to conceal my agitation. I hate your greasy handkerchiefs—you will stain your copy of Don Juan. You are not listening to me. You are making phrases about Byron. And while you gesticulate, with your cloak, your cane, I am trying to expose a secret told to nobody yet; I am asking you (as I stand with my back to you) to take my life in your hands and tell me whether I am doomed always to cause repulsion in those I love?“但是我太紧张了，不知如何给我的话画一个完美的句号。我一边飞快地说着，一边踱来踱去，以掩饰我的不安。我讨厌你那些油腻的手帕——你会弄脏你那本《唐·璜》的。你没在听我说。你在围绕着拜伦编词呢。当你用你的斗篷和手杖摆出姿势示意的时候，我正试图揭示一个未曾对人讲过的秘密；我要请你（此时我背对你站着）把我的命运掌握在你手心，告诉我，是不是我注定总是引起那些我爱的人的反感？

'I stand with my back to you fidgeting. No, my hands are now perfectly still. Precisely, opening a space in the bookcase, I insert Don Juan; there. I would rather be loved, I would rather be famous than follow perfection through the sand. But am I doomed to cause disgust? Am I a poet? Take it. The desire which is loaded behind my lips, cold as lead, fell as a bullet, the thing I aim at shop-girls, women, the pretence, the vulgarity of life (because I love it) shoots at you as I throw—catch it—my poem.'“我背对你站着，心烦意乱。不，此时我的双手分毫不乱。我准确无误地挪出书架上的空间，把《唐·璜》插了进去，正好。我宁愿有人爱我，我宁愿名声在外而不要埋头沙土以求完美。但我是不是注定要惹来厌恶？我是个诗人吗？接去吧。话到嘴边不吐不快的欲望，像铅一样冰冷，像子弹飞落，那种我瞄向女店员、妇女的东西，虚伪、生活的庸俗（因为我爱这种生活）我扔向你——接住它——连同我的诗歌。”

'He has shot like an arrow from the room,' said Bernard. 'He has left me his poem. O friendship, I too will press flowers between the pages of Shakespeare's sonnets! O friendship, how piercing are your darts—there, there, again there. He looked at me, turning to face me; he gave me his poem. All mists curl off the roof of my being. That confidence I shall keep to my dying day. Like a long wave, like a roll of heavy waters, he went over me, his devastating presence—dragging me open, laying bare the pebbles on the shore of my soul. It was humiliating; I was turned to small stones. All semblances were rolled up. "You are not Byron; you are your self."To be contracted by another person into a single being—how strange.“他像一支箭从房间里射了出去。”伯纳德说。“他把他的诗留给了我。哦，友情，我也要把鲜花印在莎士比亚十四行诗的篇章之间。哦，友情，你的飞镖多么具有穿透力——那儿，那儿，还是那儿。他转身面向我，望着我；他把他的诗交给我。我头上的迷雾顷刻散尽。这份自信我会保持到临死的那一天。像绵绵的海浪，像滚滚的浊浪，他以毁灭一切的气势将我打翻，把我扯开，使我露出灵魂海岸上的卵石。这是令人羞愧的；我变成了小小的石子。所有的表象都被卷起。‘你不是拜伦；你是你自己。’受到另一个人的钳制而成为一个单一的人——多么奇怪啊。

'How strange to feel the line that is spun from us lengthening its fine filament across the misty spaces of the intervening world. He is gone; I stand here, holding his poem. Between us is this line. But now, how comfortable, how reassuring to feel that alien presence removed, that scrutiny darkened and hooded over! How grateful to draw the blinds, and admit no other presence; to feel returning from the dark corners in which they took refuge, those shabby inmates, those familiars, whom, with his superior force, he drove into hiding. The mocking, the observant spirits who, even in the crisis and stab of the moment, watched on my behalf now come flocking home again. With their addition, I am Bernard; I am Byron; I am this, that and the other. They darken the air and enrich me, as of old, with their antics, their comments, and cloud the fine simplicity of my moment of emotion. For I am more selves than Neville thinks. We are not simple as our friends would have us to meet their needs. Yet love is simple.“多么奇怪地感觉到我们编织的诗行正拉长它细细的丝线穿越相隔的迷蒙空间。他走了。我站在这儿，捧着他的诗。我俩之间是这诗行。不过此刻，多么轻松自在，多么心安理得地感觉到那种疏离的神态消失了，那种审视的目光暗淡了，像被罩住了似的！多么快意地拉下窗帘，不许任何人在场；感觉到那些衣衫褴褛的室友，那些知己之交被他强力驱赶着躲了起来，现在正从他们避难的黑暗角落赶回来。那些喜爱嘲弄、极具观察力的精灵们，即使在危机之中和伤痛时刻也曾为我守候，这会儿正成群地返归故里。有了它们的加入，我成了伯纳德；我成了拜伦；我成了这人、那人或其他什么人。它们弥漫在空气中，像以往一样，用它们的古怪举止，它们的议论，使我变得充实起来，使我在激动时刻的那种美好的单纯黯然失色。因为我比内维尔所想的更看重自我。我们并不像朋友们为了满足他们的需要而希望的那么单纯。而爱是单纯的。

'Now they have returned, my inmates, my familiars. Now the stab, the rent in my defences that Neville made with his astonishing fine rapier, is repaired. I am almost whole now; and see how jubilant I am, bringing into play all that Neville ignores in me. I feel, as I look from the window, parting the curtains, "That would give him no pleasure; but it rejoices me."(We use our friends to measure our own stature.) My scope embraces what Neville never reaches. They are shouting hunting-songs over the way. They are celebrating some run with the beagles. The, little boys in caps who always turned at the same moment when the brake went round the corner are clapping each other on the shoulder and boasting. But Neville, delicately avoiding interference, stealthily, like a conspirator, hastens back to his room. I see him sunk in his low chair gazing at the fire which has assumed for the moment an architectural solidity. If life, he thinks, could wear that permanence, if life could have that order—for above all he desires order, and detests my Byronic untidiness; and so draws his curtain; and bolts his door. His eyes (for he is in love; the sinister figure of love presided at our encounter) fill with longing; fill with tears. He snatches the poker and with one blow destroys that momentary appearance of solidity in the burning coals. All changes. And youth and love. The boat has floated through the arch of the willows and is now under the bridge. Percival, Tony, Archie, or another, will go to India. We shall not meet again. Then he stretches his hand for his copy-book—a neat volume bound in mottled paper—and writes feverishly long lines of poetry, in the manner of whomever he admires most at the moment.“瞧，他们回来了，我的室友，我的知己之交。那道刺伤，那道内维尔用他精妙绝伦的长剑在我的防御体系中划出的缺口得到了修复。我现在几乎完好无损；瞧我多么得意地又在尽情发挥内维尔不加理会的那套玩意儿。当我拉开窗帘，从窗口望出去，我觉得，‘那不会给他带来快乐，但会令我非常高兴。’（我们通过朋友来衡量我们自身的才干。）我的视野所到之处是内维尔无法企及的。他们正一路吼着猎歌。他们正为猎兔犬的某次出击而庆贺。那些戴帽子的小男孩，他们在马车拐弯时总是同时甩头，现在正互相拍着肩膀，自吹自擂。但是内维尔，巧妙地避开干扰，偷偷摸摸地，像个阴谋者似的匆忙溜回他的房间。我看见他坐进矮椅里，凝视着炉火，这一刻它呈现出建筑物似的坚实可靠。他心想，如果生活能呈现出那种永恒，如果生活能保持那种秩序该多好啊——因为他最渴望的就是秩序，讨厌我这种拜伦似的邋遢作风；然后他拉上窗帘，闩上门。他的眼睛（因为他陷入了情网；爱情那不祥的身影笼罩了我们的会面）充满渴望，充满泪水。他猛地抓起火棍，一下子摧毁了燃烧的煤火中那短暂的坚实可靠的表象。一切都会变的。青春也好，爱情也罢。那条船漂过了柳枝形成的拱门，这会儿到了桥下。珀西瓦尔、托尼、阿奇，或者另外一个将去印度。我们不会再见面了。这时他伸手拿过他的抄写本——用斑纹纸装订的整整齐齐的一册——用他此刻最仰慕的某个人的风格，兴奋地写下长长的诗行。

'But I want to linger; to lean from the window; to listen. There again comes that rollicking chorus. They are now smashing china—that also is the convention. The chorus, like a torrent jumping rocks, brutally assaulting old trees, pours with splendid abandonment headlong over precipices. On they roll; on they gallop, after hounds, after footballs; they pump up and down attached to oars like sacks of flour. All divisions are merged—they act like one man. The gusty October wind blows the uproar in bursts of sound and silence across the court. Now again they are smashing the china—that is the convention. An old, unsteady woman carrying a bag trots home under the fire-red windows. She is half afraid that they will fall on her and tumble her into the gutter. Yet she pauses as if to warm her knobbed, her rheumaticky hands at the bonfire which flares away with streams of sparks and bits of blown paper. The old woman pauses against the lit window. A contrast. That I see and Neville does not see; that I feel and Neville does not feel. Hence he will reach perfection and I shall fail and shall leave nothing behind me but imperfect phrases littered with sand.“但是我想逗留，靠近窗口，侧耳倾听。那边又传来喧闹的合唱。他们这会儿在砸烂瓷器——那也是惯例。那合唱像激流跃过岩石，无情地冲击着老树，势如潮涌，义无反顾地冲下悬崖。他们滚滚向前；他们跃马奔驰，追着猎犬，追着足球；他们紧握船桨，一上一下，像袋袋面粉。他们分工合作——动作像一个人似的。十月的阵风刮过庭院，时而怒吼喧嚣，时而偃旗息鼓。这会儿，他们又在砸烂瓷器——那是惯例。一个摇摇晃晃的老妪，背着包，从火光映红的窗子底下急急地往家里赶。她半是害怕它们会掉下来，把她砸倒在水沟里。但她停了下来，好像要就着篝火暖和暖和她那长了骨节、害了风湿的手，这堆燃烧的篝火，纸片飞腾，火苗四溢。这位老妪在火光闪亮的窗前停了下来。形成鲜明的对照。这情景，我看见了，而内维尔却看不见；这一切，我感受到了，而内维尔感受不到。因此他将达到完美，而我将一事无成，只把泥沙混杂的残篇断简留在身后。

'I think of Louis now. What malevolent yet searching light would Louis throw upon this dwindling autumn evening, upon this china—smashing and trolling of hunting-songs, upon Neville, Byron and our life here? His thin lips are somewhat pursed; his cheeks are pale; he pores in an office over some obscure commercial document. "My father, a banker at Brisbane"—being ashamed of him he always talks of him—failed. So he sits in an office, Louis the best scholar in the school. But I seeking contrasts often feel his eye on us, his laughing eye, his wild eye, adding us up like insignificant items in some grand total which he is for ever pursuing in his office. And one day, taking a fine pen and dipping it in red ink, the addition will be complete; our total will be known; but it will not be enough.“这会儿我想起了路易斯。路易斯会用什么样的恶毒却又一针见血的话来形容这个萧索的秋日黄昏，这种砸烂瓷器和高唱猎歌的行为，以及内维尔、拜伦和我们在这里的生活呢？他薄薄的嘴唇微微噘起；他脸颊苍白；他在一间办公室里审阅着某份费解的商业文件。‘我的父亲，布里斯班的银行家’——他以父亲为耻，所以总会这样说——破产了。因此路易斯，这位全校最优秀的学生，只好坐在一间办公室里。但是在寻求比对时，我经常感觉到他的目光在看着我们，他那嘲笑的目光，他那野蛮的目光，正把我们相加，就像他在办公室里一直追查某一笔总账时面对着那些无关紧要的细目一样。然后有一天，他拿出一支精致的钢笔，蘸了红色的墨水，要完成他的结算；我们将得知我们的总额；但是这还不够。

'Bang! They have thrown a chair now against the wall. We are damned then. My case is dubious too. Am I not indulging in unwarranted emotions? Yes, as I lean out of the window and drop my cigarette so that it twirls lightly to the ground, I feel Louis watching even my cigarette. And Louis says, "That means something. But what?"'“砰！这会儿他们把一张椅子抛向墙壁。这么说我们是没治了。我的情况也难说。难道我不也是醉心于无根无据的情感么？没错，当我侧身窗外，丢下香烟，看它打着转轻飘飘落向地面，我感觉路易斯甚至也在看着我的香烟。路易斯说：‘这其中有点意思。但，是什么呢？’”

'People go on passing,' said Louis. They pass the window of this eating-shop incessantly. Motor-cars, vans, motor-omnibuses; and again motor-omnibuses, vans, motor-cars—they pass the window. In the background I perceive shops and houses; also the grey spires of a city church. In the foreground are glass shelves set with plates of buns and ham sandwiches. All is somewhat obscured by steam from a tea-urn. A meaty, vapourish smell of beef and mutton, sausages and mash, hangs down like a damp net in the middle of the eating-house. I prop my book against a bottle of Worcester sauce and try to look like the rest.“人们络绎不绝。”路易斯说。他们络绎不绝地经过这家饮食店的窗前。汽车、货车、公共汽车；又是公共汽车、货车、汽车——它们从窗前经过。隐隐约约地，我注意到一家家店铺和一幢幢住宅；还有一座城市教堂的灰色塔尖。眼前是摆放了一盘盘小面包和火腿三明治的玻璃货架。茶水壶冒出的热气使得一切变得影影绰绰。牛肉和羊肉、香肠和土豆泥散发出的夹杂着肉味的蒸汽，像一张潮湿的网从馆子中央垂了下来。我把书靠着一瓶伍斯特调味汁，尽力看上去像其他人一样。

'Yet I cannot. (They go on passing, they go on passing in disorderly procession.) I cannot read my book, or order my beef, with conviction. I repeat, "I am an average Englishman; I am an average clerk", yet I look at the little men at the next table to be sure that I do what they do. Supple-faced, with rippling skins, that are always twitching with the multiplicity of their sensations, prehensile like monkeys, greased to this particular moment, they are discussing with all the right gestures the sale of a piano. It blocks up the hall; so he would take a Tenner. People go on passing; they go on passing against the spires of the church and the plates of ham sandwiches. The streamers of my consciousness waver out and are perpetually torn and distressed by their disorder. I cannot therefore concentrate on my dinner. "I would take a tenner. The case is handsome; but it blocks up the hall."They dive and plunge like guillemots whose feathers are slippery with oil. All excesses beyond that norm are vanity. That is the mean; that is the average. Meanwhile the hats bob up and down; the door perpetually shuts and opens. I am conscious of flux, of disorder; of annihilation and despair. If this is all, this is worthless. Yet I feel, too, the rhythm of the eating-house. It is like a waltz tune, eddying in and out, round and round. The waitresses, balancing trays, swing in and out, round and round, dealing plates of greens, of apricot and custard, dealing them at the right time, to the right customers. The average men, including her rhythm in their rhythm ("I would take a tenner; for it blocks up the hall") take their greens, take their apricots and custard. Where then is the break in this continuity? What the fissure through which one sees disaster? The circle is unbroken; the harmony complete. Here is the central rhythm; here the common mainspring. I watch it expand, contract; and then expand again. Yet I am not included. If I speak, imitating their accent, they prick their ears, waiting for me to speak again, in order that they may place me—if I come from Canada or Australia, I, who desire above all things to be taken to the arms with love, am alien, external. I, who would wish to feel close over me the protective waves of the ordinary, catch with the tail of my eye some far horizon; am aware of hats bobbing up and down in perpetual disorder. To me is addressed the plaint of the wandering and distracted spirit (a woman with bad teeth falters at the counter), "Bring us back to the fold, we who pass so disjectedly, bobbing up and down, past windows with plates of ham sandwiches in the foreground."Yes; I will reduce you to order.“但是我却做不到。（他们络绎不绝，他们来来往往，杂乱无章。）我无法果断地读我的书，或者点我的牛肉。我重复道：‘我是个平常的英国人；我是个平常的职员。’但是我却要看着旁边桌上那几个小个子男人，才能确信我的举动跟他们一样。他们脸庞柔软有弹性，泛着皱纹，脸上的皮肤因为情绪的多变而抽搐不止，他们像猴子一样善于心领神会，圆滑而通融，为应对眼前的特殊时刻，他们正使出浑身解数商讨一架钢琴的出售问题。它挡住了大厅，所以他宁愿十镑钱卖掉它。人们络绎不绝；他们络绎不绝地经过教堂的塔尖和一盘盘火腿三明治。我意识中的彩旗飘摇无定，不断地被撕裂，不断地被他们的杂乱无章困扰着。因此我无法专心吃我的饭。‘我宁愿十镑钱就卖。这架钢琴美观大方；但它挡住了大厅。’他们俯冲，潜入水中，好像羽毛油光水滑的海鸠。超越这一模式的多余之举皆毫无价值。这就是一般；这就是平常。同时，一顶顶帽子忽高忽低；门不停地开开合合。我意识到变化无常、杂乱无章；意识到毁灭与绝望。如果这就是一切，这是毫无价值的。但是我还感觉到这家饮食店的节奏。它像是一支华尔兹舞曲，来来回回，旋转不息。侍女们稳稳地擎着托盘，来来回回，旋转不息，端着一盘盘青菜，一碟碟杏子和蛋奶沙司，及时而准确无误地端给各位顾客。这些平常的人们正把她的节奏融入他们的节奏（‘我宁愿十镑钱售出；因为它挡住了大厅’）接过青菜，接过杏子和蛋奶沙司。那么这衔接从哪儿中断了？是什么样的裂隙让人看到了灾难？这圈子是完整的；这和谐是完美的。这里有主旋律；这里有共同的主发条。我看着它扩张，收缩，然后重新扩张。可是我并未融入进去。如果我模仿着他们的口音说起话来，他们就会竖起耳朵，等待我重新开口，以便于确认我的归属地——我是不是来自加拿大或者澳大利亚，而我，这个不顾一切渴望投入爱的怀抱的人，却是个另类，一个局外人。我，那个总希望接近平常人那种爱的浪涛的我用我的眼角瞥见某个远方的景象；意识到一些帽子忽高忽低，总是那么杂乱无章。那颗彷徨、迷乱的心灵向我诉苦（一个豁牙露齿的女人在柜台前结结巴巴地说）：‘把我们带回到羊栏去吧，我们这些来来往往、散沙似地从摆满一盘盘火腿三明治的橱窗跟前经过的人。’好吧，我要让你们有秩序。

'I will read in the book that is propped against the bottle of Worcester sauce. It contains some forged rings, some perfect statements, a few words, but poetry. You, all of you, ignore it. What the dead poet said, you have forgotten. And I cannot translate it to you so that its binding power ropes you in, and makes it clear to you that you are aimless; and the rhythm is cheap and worthless; and so remove that degradation which, if you are unaware of your aimlessness, pervades you, making you senile, even while you are young. To translate that poem so that it is easily read is to be my endeavour. I,

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